Review

Meiosis specific coiled-coil proteins in Shizosaccharomyces pombe

Ayami Ohtaka¹ , Takamune T Saito^1,2 , Daisuke Okuzaki¹ and Hiroshi Nojima¹

¹  Department of Molecular Genetics, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, 3-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

²  Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, New Research Building, Room 334, Boston, MA 02115, USA

author email corresponding author email

Cell Division 2007, 2:14doi:10.1186/1747-1028-2-14

Published:	18 May 2007

Abstract

Many meiosis-specific proteins in Schizosaccharomyces pombe contain coiled-coil motifs which play essential roles for meiotic progression. For example, the coiled-coil motifs present in Meu13 and Mcp7 are required for their function as a putative recombinase cofactor complex during meiotic recombination. Mcp6/Hrs1 and Mcp5/Num1 control horsetail chromosome movement by astral microtubule organization and anchoring dynein respectively. Dhc1 and Ssm4 are also required for horsetail chromosome movement. It is clear from these examples that the coiled-coil motif in these proteins plays an important role during the progression of cells through meiosis. However, there are still many unanswered questions on how these proteins operate. In this paper, we briefly review recent studies on the meiotic coiled-coil proteins in Sz. pombe.