Recycling endosomes : good for the furrow environment

Cytokinesis requires dramatic actin remodeling to produce the wall of actin and myosin that pinches apart the two daughters. Loads of membrane also have to be added to accommodate the increased surface area at the point of separation. On page 143, Riggs et al. show that these two processes may be coordinately accomplished by recycling endosomes (REs)—vesicles that take in and then return plasma membrane components via a centrosome-targeted pathway.

The group had previously found that a centrosome-associated protein called Nuf is necessary for actin remodeling during the cytokinetic-like furrow formation of multinucleated fly embryos—a process that prevents individual dividing nuclei from bumping into each other. Centrosomes organize microtubules but are not known to coordinate actin polymerization. So when Nuf turned out to be a homologue of Arfophilin, a mammalian GTPase effector...