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Lipid microdomains in yeast

Lipid microdomains provide a mechanism for compartmentalizing membranes, selectively incorporating certain proteins but not others. In mammalian cells, sterol-rich microdomains are important for a variety of processes, including signalling, membrane trafficking and cytoskeletal regulation. Since such microdomains also exist in fission yeast, this organism might represent a useful model system for analyses of their locations and functions. Mohan Balasubramanian and co-workers now show that this is indeed the case (see p. 867). They have used filipin, a fluorescent probe that targets 3-ß-hydroxysterols, to identify sterol-rich domains at the site of cytokinesis and at the growing tips of cells. The authors find that localization of sterols to these microdomains is cell cycle dependent and requires a functional secretory pathway. Furthermore, they show that sequestration of sterols by filipin produces defects in cytokinesis and destabilizes Bgs4p — a plasma membrane protein concentrated at growing tips and the site of cytokinesis. Their findings thus not only establish S. pombe as a genetically tractable model organism for studies of sterol-rich membrane domains but also indicate that these domains are important for targeting of the growth and division machinery.

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Sterol-rich plasma membrane domains in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Volker Wachtler, Srividya Rajagopalan, and Mohan K. Balasubramanian
JCS 2003 116: 867-874. [Abstract] [Full Text]  

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Related articles in JCS Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?