Dicty News Electronic Edition Volume 17, number 10 ********, 2001 Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been accepted for publication by sending them to dicty@northwestern.edu. Back issues of Dicty-News, the Dicty Reference database and other useful information is available at DictyBase--http://dictybase.org. ============= Abstracts ============= The NF-kB like DNA binding activity observed in Dictyostelium nuclear extracts is due to the GBF transcription factor Franois TRAINCARD 1, Eleonora PONTE 1, Jason PUN 2, Barrie COUKELL 2 and Michel VERON 1 1: Unit de Rgulation enzymatique des Activits cellulaires, CNRS FRE 2364, Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Dr. Roux, 75724, Paris Cedex 15, France. 2: York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada. Accepted in Journal of Cell Science We have previously reported that a NF-kB transduction pathway was likely to be present in the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum (Traincard, F., Ponte, E., Pun, J., Coukell, B. and Vron, M., 1999, J. Cell Science, 112, 3529-3535). This conclusion was based on several observations, including the detection of developmentally regulated DNA binding proteins in Dictyostelium nuclear extracts, which bound to bona fide kB sequences. We have now performed additional experiments that demonstrate that the protein responsible for this NF-kB like DNA binding activity is the Dictyostelium GBF (G box regulatory element Binding Factor) transcription factor. This result, along with the fact that no sequence with significant similarity to components of the mammalian NF-kB pathway can be found in Dictyostelium genome, now almost entirely sequenced, led us to reconsider our previous conclusion on the occurrence of a NF-kB signal transduction pathway in Dictyostelium. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [End Dicty News, volume 17, number 10]