Unbiased segregation of yeast chromatids in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is characterized by asymmetric cell division and the asymmetric inheritance of spindle components during normal vegetative growth and during certain specialized cell divisions. There has been a longstanding interest in the possibility that yeast chromosomes segregate nonrandomly during mitosis and that some of the differences between mother and daughter cells could be explained by selective chromatid segregation. This review traces the history of the experiments to determine if there is biased chromatid segregation in yeast. The special aspects of spindle morphogenesis and behavior in yeast that could accommodate a mechanism for biased segregation are discussed. Finally, a recent experiment demonstrated that yeast chromatids segregate randomly without motherdaughter bias in a common laboratory strain grown under routine laboratory conditions.

Asymmetric Segregation of Aged Spindle Pole Bodies During Cell Division: Mechanisms and Relevance Beyond Budding Yeast?

“…Indeed, several stem‐(like) cell types keep the chromatids with older templates during asymmetric cell division . Nevertheless, other types of stem cells appear to not segregate DNA strands in this orderly fashion . One explanation suggests that if the examined cells were not undergoing asymmetric self‐renewal, non‐random segregation might not be expected.…”

Replication Stress Induces ATR/CHK1-Dependent Nonrandom Segregation of Damaged Chromosomes

“…However, this dogma has been challenged recently by evidence indicating that asymmetric cell division is fundamental in many aspects of stem cell biology (Habib et al, 2013;Rocheteau et al, 2012;Tran et al, 2012;Zimdahl et al, 2014), in lymphocytes (Chang et al, 2011;Thaunat et al, 2012;Verbist et al, 2016), and in cancer (Knoblich, 2010;Zhang et al, 2014). The phenomenon of asymmetric cell division has been widely discussed in the context of nonnuclear components and nuclear components in different organisms (Burke, 2013;Denoth-Lippuner et al, 2014;Derivery et al, 2015;Gallo et al, 2010;Katajisto et al, 2015;Kressmann et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2013;Lopez-Vernaza and Leach, 2013;Yang et al, 2015). There has been a longstanding interest in the possibility that chromosomes segregate nonrandomly during mitosis and that some of the differences between mother and daughter cells could be explained by selective chromatid segregation.…”