Kinetochore assembly and heterochromatin formation occur autonomously in Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

ABSTRACT: Kinetochores in multicellular eukaryotes are usually associated with heterochromatin. Whether this heterochromatin simply promotes the cohesion necessary for accurate chromosome segregation at cell division or whether it also has a role in kinetochore assembly is unclear. Schizosaccharomyces pombe is an important experimental system for investigating centromere function, but all of the previous work with this species has exploited a single strain or its derivatives. The laboratory strain and most other S. pombe strains contain three chromosomes, but one recently discovered strain, CBS 2777, contains four. We show that the genome of CBS 2777 is related to that of the laboratory strain by a complex chromosome rearrangement. As a result, two of the kinetochores in CBS 2777 contain the central

SUBMITTER: Brown WR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3918819 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature