Handling Editor: John Heath
ABSTRACT
Tip growth is critical for the lifestyle of many walled cells. In yeast and fungi, this process is typically associated with the polarized deposition of conserved tip factors, including landmarks, Rho GTPases, cytoskeleton regulators, and membrane and cell wall remodelers. Because tip growth speeds may vary extensively between life cycles or species, we asked whether the local amount of specific polar elements could determine or limit tip growth speeds. Using the model fission yeast, we developed a quantitative image analysis pipeline to dynamically correlate single tip elongation speeds and polar protein abundance in large data sets. We found that polarity landmarks are typically diluted by growth. In contrast, tip growth speed is positively correlated with the local amount of factors related to actin, secretion or cell wall remodeling, but, surprisingly, exhibits long saturation plateaus above certain concentrations of those factors. Similar saturation observed for Spitzenkörper components in much faster growing fungal hyphae suggests that elements independent of canonical surface remodelers may limit single tip growth. This work provides standardized methods and resources to decipher the complex mechanisms that control cell growth.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: S.T., D.E., N.M.; Methodology: S.T., D.E., S.D.; Software: D.E., S.D.; Validation: D.E.; Formal analysis: S.T., D.E., S.D., N.M.; Investigation: S.T., D.E., N.M.; Data curation: S.T., S.D.; Writing - original draft: S.T., D.E., N.M.; Writing - review & editing: S.T., D.E., S.D., N.M.; Supervision: N.M.; Project administration: N.M.; Funding acquisition: N.M.
Funding
This work was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (‘Cell size’; no. ANR-14-CE11-0009-02) and the European Research Council (ERC CoG ‘Forcaster’; no. 647073).
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at https://jcs.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jcs.252064.supplemental
- Received July 22, 2020.
- Accepted October 14, 2020.
- © 2020. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
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