A major control point of the cell cycle in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a G1 event called 'start'. At start a yeast cell integrates external and internal signals and decides to progress toward mitosis or to choose alternative pathways such as sporulation, conjugation etc.cdc25 is a class I1 temperature-sensitive start mutant that blocks at restrictive temperature in GI as round unbudded cells.The arrest of the cell cycle appears to be independent of the carbon and nitrogen sources, and the cell wall of cdc25-arrested cells shows changes similar to those found in cells undergoing entry in to the stationary phase.After a shift to 36 "C the increase in cell number of cdc25 cultures is gradually inhibited. The nuclear division cycle appears to be inhibited immediately after the shift and the percentage of budded cells decreases, while cytoplasmic growth, monitored either as increase of adsorbance at 450 nm or as protein accumulation, continues for many hours leading to a progressive increase of mean cell volume and mean protein content per cell.The stable RNA accumulation instead is immediately inhibited and this is partially due to a 50 inhibition of ribosomal RNA synthesis, while the rate of synthesis of ds-killer RNA is relatively unaffected.These data suggest that the CDC25 gene product could be a part of a mechanism that leads yeast cells to choose between the progression towards DNA replication and cell division or to enter into the stationary phase. This mechanism appears to turn off both rRNA accumulation and cell-cycle progression and to activate differentiative pathways in response to environmental restriction.The molecular basis of the coordination between growth and the nuclear division cycle is far from being understood. For budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae a major control point has been found in G1 and it has been called 'start' [1,2]. At start, a yeast cell integrates much biochemical and environmental information and decides, depending on its genetic background, on a number of alternative pathways : sporulation, conjugation, entrance in stationary phase, or progress towards mitosis [I -41. The traverse of start is required for the beginning of the nuclear division cycle, and in growing cells, a few minutes after the completion of this event, both initiation of DNA synthesis and bud emergence begin [5]. However, many recent papers [3,4,6] have stressed that start is more an area than a point, since different environmental factors block yeast cells at start in physiologically distinct states. Accordingly, the start cdc mutants, i.e. temperature-sensitive mutants that block at a restrictive temperature at or near start, [7] have been divided into class I and class 11 mutants according to their terminal phenotype [6].Class I mutants continue to grow, while bud emergence and DNA replication are blocked, thus resembling alphafactor-treated cells [6]. Moreover, they are able to conjugate at restrictive temperature but not to sporulate if diploid. Class I1 mutants do not grow at restrictive temperature ...