A knockout screen for protein kinases required for the proper meiotic segregation of chromosomes in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Abstract

The reduction of chromosome number during meiosis is achieved by two successive rounds of chromosome segregation after just single round of DNA replication. To identify novel proteins required for the proper segregation of chromosomes during meiosis, we analyzed the consequences of deleting Schizosaccharomyces pombe genes predicted to encode protein kinases that are not essential for cell viability. We show that Mph1, a member of the Mps1 family of spindle assembly checkpoint kinases, is required to prevent meiosis I homolog non-disjunction. We also provide evidence for a novel function of Spo4, the fission yeast ortholog of Dbf4-dependent Cdc7 kinase, in regulating the length of anaphase II spindles. In the absence of Spo4, abnormally elongated anaphase II spindles frequently overlap and thus destroy the linear order of nuclei in the ascus. Our observation that the spo4Δ mutant phenotype can be partially suppressed by inhibiting Cdc2-as suggests that dysregulation of the activity of this cyclin-dependent kinase may cause abnormal elongation of anaphase II spindles in spo4Δ mutant cells.

Keywords: :

• protein kinase
• chromosome segregation
• meiosis
• fission yeast
• anaphase
• spindle

This article is referred to by:

Phosphorylation

Protein kinases required for proper segregation of chromosomes during meiosis

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank M. Sato, M. Yamamoto, C. Shimoda and M. Balasubramanian for providing plasmids and yeast strains and S. Loidl, Z. Cande, C. Kraft, Y. Watanabe, W. Zachariae and D. Zickler for helpful discussions. This work was supported by Austrian Science Fund grants P23609 and P21437 and HFSP grant RGY0069/2010. I.K. was supported by Slovak Academic Information Agency and S.P. was supported by EMBO long-term fellowship. L.C. was supported by the (European Community’s) Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number PERG07-GA-2010–268167. J.G. was supported by the (European Community's) Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number PCIG11-GA-2012-322300.

Supplemental Materials

Supplemental materials may be found here:

www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cc/article/23513