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The price of independence: cell separation in fission yeast

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Abstract

The ultimate goal of cell division is to give rise to two viable independent daughter cells. A tight spatial and temporal regulation between chromosome segregation and cytokinesis ensures the viability of the daughter cells. Schizosaccharomyces pombe, commonly known as fission yeast, has become a leading model organism for studying essential and conserved mechanisms of the eukaryotic cell division process. Like many other eukaryotic cells it divides by binary fission and the cleavage furrow undergoes ingression due to the contraction of an actomyosin ring. In contrast to mammalian cells, yeasts as cell-walled organisms, also need to form a division septum made of cell wall material to complete the process of cytokinesis. The division septum is deposited behind the constricting ring and it will constitute the new ends of the daughter cells. Cell separation also involves cell wall degradation and this process should be precisely regulated to avoid cell lysis. In this review, we will give a brief overview of the whole cytokinesis process in fission yeast, from the positioning and assembly of the contractile ring to the final step of cell separation, and the problems generated when these processes are not precise.

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Acknowledgments

We apologize to all authors whose work has not been cited due to space limitation. This work was supported by Grants BFU2013-43439-P from MINECO (Spain) and grant CSI037U14 from Junta de Castilla y León (Spain).

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  1. Instituto de Biología Funcional y Genómica (IBFG), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, University of Salamanca, 37007, Salamanca, Spain

    Rebeca Martín-García & Beatriz Santos

  2. Departamento de Microbiología y Genética, University of Salamanca, 37007, Salamanca, Spain

    Beatriz Santos

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  1. Rebeca Martín-García
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Correspondence to Beatriz Santos.

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Martín-García, R., Santos, B. The price of independence: cell separation in fission yeast. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 32, 65 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-016-2021-8

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