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Originally published in Science Express on 13 December 2007
Science 4 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5859, pp. 97 - 100
DOI: 10.1126/science.1151086
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Reports

Assembly Mechanism of the Contractile Ring for Cytokinesis by Fission Yeast

Dimitrios Vavylonis,1,2,3* Jian-Qiu Wu,2*{dagger} Steven Hao,4 Ben O'Shaughnessy,1 Thomas D. Pollard2,4,5{ddagger}

Animals and fungi assemble a contractile ring of actin filaments and the motor protein myosin to separate into individual daughter cells during cytokinesis. We used fluorescence microscopy of live fission yeast cells to observe that membrane-bound nodes containing myosin were broadly distributed around the cell equator and assembled into a contractile ring through stochastic motions, after a meshwork of dynamic actin filaments appeared. Analysis of node motions and numerical simulations supported a mechanism whereby transient connections are established when myosins in one node capture and exert force on actin filaments growing from other nodes.

1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
2 Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
3 Department of Physics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA.
4 Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
5 Department of Cell Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Molecular Genetics and Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

{ddagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: thomas.pollard{at}yale.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)