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Molecular and Cellular Biology, June 2005, p. 4767-4781, Vol. 25, No. 11
0270-7306/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/MCB.25.11.4767-4781.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
and
Angelika Amon1,
*
Center for Cancer Research, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, E17-233, 40 Ames St., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139,1 Biozentrum & Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Klingelbergstrasse 50-70, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland2
Received 7 December 2004/ Returned for modification 19 January 2005/ Accepted 24 February 2005
During the mitotic cell cycle, microtubule depolymerization leads to a cell cycle arrest in metaphase, due to activation of the spindle checkpoint. Here, we show that under microtubule-destabilizing conditions, such as low temperature or the presence of the spindle-depolymerizing drug benomyl, meiotic budding yeast cells arrest in G1 or G2, instead of metaphase. Cells arrest in G1 if microtubule perturbation occurs as they enter the meiotic cell cycle and in G2 if cells are already undergoing premeiotic S phase. Concomitantly, cells down-regulate genes required for cell cycle progression, meiotic differentiation, and spore formation in a highly coordinated manner. Decreased expression of these genes is likely to be responsible for halting both cell cycle progression and meiotic development. Our results point towards the existence of a novel surveillance mechanism of microtubule integrity that may be particularly important during specialized cell cycles when coordination of cell cycle progression with a developmental program is necessary.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://mcb.asm.org/.
M.P. and A.A. made an equal contribution.
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