Although endocytosis and exocytosis have been extensively studied in budding yeast, there have been relatively few investigations of these complex processes in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Here we identify and characterize fission yeast Mug33, a novel Tea1-interacting protein, and show that Mug33 is involved in exocytosis. Mug33 is a Sur7/PalI-family transmembrane protein that l...

The Schizosaccharomyces pombe ran1/pat1 gene regulates the transition between mitosis and meiosis. Inactivation of Ran1 (Pat1) kinase is necessary and sufficient for cells to exit the cell cycle and undergo meiosis. The yeast two-hybrid interaction trap was used to identify protein partners for Ran1/Pat1. Here we report the identification of one of these, Cpc2. Cpc2 encodes a homologue of RACK1...

Target of rapamycin complex 1 (TORC1) is implicated in growth control and aging from yeast to humans. Fission yeast is emerging as a popular model organism to study TOR signaling, although rapamycin has been thought to not affect cell growth in this organism. Here, we analyzed the effects of rapamycin and caffeine, singly and combined, on multiple cellular processes in fission yeast. The two dr...

Mre11, Rad50, and Nbs1 form a conserved heterotrimeric complex that is involved in recombination and DNA damage checkpoints. Mutations in this complex disrupt the S-phase DNA damage checkpoint, the checkpoint which slows replication in response to DNA damage, and cause chromosome instability and cancer in humans. However, how these proteins function and specifically where they act in the checkp...

In budding yeast, Set2 catalyzes di- and trimethylation of H3K36 (H3K36me2 and H3K36me3) via an interaction between its Set2-Rpb1 interaction (SRI) domain and C-terminal repeats of RNA polymerase II (Pol2) phosphorylated at Ser2 and Ser5 (CTD-S2,5-P). H3K36me2 is sufficient for recruitment of the Rpd3S histone deacetylase complex to repress cryptic transcription from transcribed regions. In fis...

In humans, MOZART1 plays an essential role in mitotic spindle formation as a component of the γ-tubulin ring complex. We report that the fission yeast homologue of MOZART1, Mzt1/Tam4, is located at microtubule-organizing centers (MTOCs) and coimmunoprecipitates with γ-tubulin Gtb1 from cell extracts. We show that mzt1/tam4 is an essential gene in fission yeast, encoding a 64-amino acid peptide,...

A new study shows that differences in the regulation of lipin can account for the different strategies of nuclear division in two closely related fission yeast species.

We have adapted a method for making libraries of mutations in any specific gene for use in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe . This elegant and simple method consists of PCR amplification of the gene of interest, followed by co-transformation of fission yeast with the PCR fragment and a linearized plasmid vector prepared such that the ends of the vector share DNA sequence with the end...

The well-studied DNA replication origins of the model budding and fission yeasts are A/T-rich elements. However, unlike their yeast counterparts, both plant and metazoan origins are G/C-rich and are associated with transcription start sites. Here we show that an industrially important methylotrophic budding yeast, Pichia pastoris, simultaneously employs at least two types of replication origins...

Recent investigations have revealed hitherto unsuspected roles for small, non-coding RNA molecules and regulated pre-mRNA splicing during meiosis in fission yeast.