One of the most fundamental changes in cell morphology is the ingression of a plasma membrane furrow. The Drosophila embryo undergoes several cycles of rapid furrow ingression during early development that culminate in the formation of an epithelial sheet. Previous studies have demonstrated the requirement for intracellular trafficking pathways in furrow ingression; however, the pathways that l...

De novo formation of cells in the Drosophila embryo is achieved when each nucleus is surrounded by a furrow of plasma membrane. Remodeling of the plasma membrane during cleavage furrow ingression involves the exocytic and endocytic pathways, including endocytic tubules that form at cleavage furrow tips (CFT-tubules). The tubules are marked by amphiphysin but are otherwise poorly understood. Her...

BACKGROUND After anaphase, the segregated chromosomes are sequestered by cytokinesis into two separate daughter cells by a cleavage furrow formed by the actomyosin-based contractile ring. The failure to properly position the contractile ring between the segregated chromosomes can result in aneuploidy. In both C. elegans embryos and human cells, the central spindle regulates division-plane posit...

The geometry of the cleavage furrow during mitosis is often asymmetric in vivo and plays a critical role in stem cell differentiation and the relative positioning of daughter cells during development. Early observations of adhesive cell lines revealed asymmetry in the shape of the cleavage furrow, where the bottom (i.e., substrate attached side) of the cleavage furrow ingressed less than the to...

The final steps of cell division are tightly coordinated in space and time, but whether mechanisms exist to couple the actin and microtubule (MT) cytoskeletons during anaphase and cytokinesis (C phase) is largely unknown. During anaphase, MTs are incorporated into an anti-parallel array termed the spindle midzone (midzone MTs), whereas F-actin and non-muscle myosin II, together with other facto...

How myosin II localizes to the cleavage furrow in Dictyostelium and metazoan cells remains largely unknown despite significant advances in understanding its regulation. We designed a genetic selection using cDNA library suppression of 3xAsp myosin II to identify factors involved in myosin cleavage furrow accumulation. The 3xAsp mutant is deficient in bipolar thick filament assembly, fails to ac...

The early Drosophila embryo undergoes two distinct membrane invagination events believed to be mechanistically related to cytokinesis: metaphase furrow formation and cellularization. Both involve actin cytoskeleton rearrangements, and both have myosin II at or near the forming furrow. Actin and myosin are thought to provide the force driving membrane invagination; however, membrane addition is ...

During Drosophila eye development, cell differentiation is preceded by the formation of a morphogenetic furrow, which progresses across the epithelium from posterior to anterior. Cells within the morphogenetic furrow are apically constricted and shortened along their apical-basal axis. However, how these cell shape changes and, thus, the progression of the morphogenetic furrow are controlled is...

The early Drosophila embryo undergoes two distinct membrane invagination events believed to be mechanistically related to cytokinesis: metaphase furrow formation and cellularization. Both involve actin cytoskeleton rearrangements, and both have myosin II at or near the forming furrow. Actin and myosin are thought to provide the force driving membrane invagination; however, membrane addition is ...