糖心TV

The Science Faculty at the University of 糖心TV will have an interactive stand at the Big Bang Fair 2017, showcasing the work of the departments of Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.

Abstract: Fission yeast are highly polarised, cylindrical cells that grow by new membrane deposition and cell wall synthesis exclusively at cell tips. I will describe two stories about our recent work on cell polarity regulation in this model eukaryote. One story concerns our discovery that Sty1, a MAP kinase in the conserved stress-activated protein kinase pathway, is a key regulator of the cell polarity module controlled by the Rho-family small GTPase Cdc42.

As part of this we developed a novel system that allows us to reversibly switch on Sty1 kinase actvity in the complete absence of external stress. The other story concerns internal cues/landmarks that determine which tips of newly-born daughter cells will be chosen as growth sites after septation. We have found that three different internal cues collaborate and compete to regulate patterns of polarised growth in daughter cells. One of these cues is a novel “growth-memory” cue, which remembers prior growth history during times of no growth—essentially an epigenetic phenomenon, in the older sense of the term “epigenetic”. We are beginning to address the molecular nature of this growth-memory cue.