Peroxisomes on the move

The cell may not be as lazy as we first thought. With an organelle that comes in multiple copies, there is always the option of leaving segregation of that organelle to random chance—in most cases each daughter cell will get at least one copy of the organelle. But budding yeast is not prepared to take that risk, especially when growing daughter cells are so much smaller than mature mothers. On page 979, Hoepfner et al. find that yeast cells actively segregate their peroxisomes. The segregation machinery includes actin cables and a specific motor, Myo2p, and the substrate for the segregation is provided by the dynamin Vps1p, which cleaves the peroxisomes into manageable pieces.Hoepfner et al. came to these conclusions after observing the movement of individual GFP-labeled peroxisomes along the cell cortex to the bud neck, bud cortex, and bud...