The old SPB (seen here in yellow) enters the bud.

Schiebel/EMBO

Like kids leaving home for the first time, newly formed yeast cells get some hand-me-downs from their parents. According to a new study, during cell division the bud receives the old version of the spindle pole body, the structure that anchors microtubules during chromosome separation.

Embedded in the nuclear membrane, the spindle pole body (SPB) duplicates before division. Based on indirect evidence, previous work had led to the conclusion that the new cell always got the new SPB. However, Elmar Schiebel of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, Scotland, and colleagues came to the opposite conclusion when they marked the old SPB selectively by timed folding of a red fluorescent protein and observed its movement during mitosis.

The old SPB also picked up a hitchhiker, the Bfa1p–Bub2p GAP complex. This complex is...

The Rockefeller University Press
2001
The Rockefeller University Press
2001
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