Fig. 7. Microtubular dynamics in wild-type fission yeast cells are coordinated. (A) cyr1 sxa2 nmt1atb2GFP cells were treated with pheromone for 5 hours. Cells were then imaged every 6 seconds on a confocal microscope. The panels show the first 3.3 minutes of a typical time course. Images shown are projections of sections through the whole cell. + and – indicate growing and shrinking microtubules respectively. (B) Microtubule lengths for single cells were measured distinguishing the side of the cell in which they lie. The diagram describes the dynamics of the microtubules of the cell shown in A over the total filming period of 4.5 minutes. The concordance of dynamics at each cell end and between opposite cell ends was then calculated as a percentage of total time points, where eight cells were scored for a total imaging time of 45 minutes. (C) cyr1 sxa2 nmt1atb2GFP were induced with pheromone for 5-6 hours, placed on a lectin-coated glass bottom dish, bleached with a localised laser beam and then filmed every 6 seconds to monitor the pattern of recovery. Images show a single plane through the middle of the cell. The yellow arrows indicate the position of the SPB, from which more than one microtubule originates. The grey lines mark the initial bleached area. The bleached area moves in the same direction as the SPB, with the distance between the SPB and the further boundary of the bleached area remaining the same, as indicated by a green bar in two panels, and the fluorescence recovers from the boundary closer to the SPB. (D) cyr1 sxa2 nmt1atb2GFP cells were induced with pheromone for 6 hours. Microtubules were bleached with a pulse of laser light; MBC was then added to depolymerise the microtubules, which were filmed with a confocal microscope (see Materials and Methods for details). Images shown are single planes through a cell. The red arrow marks the initial bleaching position. Bar, 3 µm.