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First published online January 14, 2005
doi: 10.1242/10.1242/jcs.01629

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Mcp6, a meiosis-specific coiled-coil protein of Schizosaccharomyces pombe, localizes to the spindle pole body and is required for horsetail movement and recombination

Department of Molecular Genetics, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, 3-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: snj-0212{at}biken.osaka-u.ac.jp)

Accepted 3 November 2004

We report here that a meiosis-specific gene of Schizosaccharomyces pombe denoted mcp6⁺ (meiotic coiled-coil protein) encodes a protein that is required for the horsetail movement of chromosomes at meiosis I. The mcp6⁺ gene is specifically transcribed during the horsetail phase. Green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged Mcp6 appears at the start of karyogamy, localizes to the spindle-pole body (SPB) and then disappears before chromosome segregation at meiosis I. In the mcp6 strain, the horsetail movement was either hampered (zygotic meiosis) or abolished (azygotic meiosis) and the pairing of homologous chromosomes was impaired. Accordingly, the allelic recombination rates of the mcp6 strain were only 10-40% of the wild-type rates. By contrast, the ectopic recombination rate of the mcp6 strain was twice the wild-type rate. This is probably caused by abnormal homologous pairing in mcp6 cells because of aberrant horsetail movement. Fluorescent microscopy indicates that SPB components such as Sad1, Kms1 and Spo15 localize normally in mcp6 cells. Because Taz1 and Swi6 also localized with Sad1 in mcp6 cells, Mcp6 is not required for telomere clustering. In a taz1 strain, which does not display telomere clustering, and the dhc1-d3 mutant, which lacks horsetail movement, Mcp6 localized with Sad1 normally. However, we observed abnormal astral microtubule organization in mcp6 cells. From these results, we conclude that Mcp6 is necessary for neither SPB organization nor telomere clustering, but is required for proper astral microtubule positioning to maintain horsetail movement.

Key words: Meiosis, S. pombe, SPB, Recombination, Pairing, Horsetail

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