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Fission yeast on the brink of meiosis
Author(s) -
Egel Richard
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/1521-1878(200009)22:9<854::aid-bies11>3.0.co;2-t
Subject(s) - schizosaccharomyces pombe , synapsis , meiosis , biology , sexual reproduction , zygote , yeast , prophase , schizosaccharomyces , genetics , microbiology and biotechnology , fission , model organism , saccharomyces cerevisiae , gene , physics , quantum mechanics , neutron , embryogenesis
Abstract The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe ( S. pombe ) is now well established as a versatile genetic model organism. It is widely used to analyse the basic eukaryotic cell cycle during vegetative growth and it is also well suited to studies on the elementary processes of sexual reproduction, including intercellular communication and signal transduction in zygote formation, as well as meiosis before sporulation. Systematic mutant screening has contributed much to our current understanding of unicellular differentiation in S. pombe , and structural analysis has revealed a simplified meiotic prophase with abundant crossing‐over but no homologue synapsis. This article is a personal account of how this branch of fission yeast genetics has developed. BioEssays 22:854–860, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.