A new class of cyclin dependent kinase in Chlamydomonas is required for coupling cell size to cell division

  1. Yubing Li
  2. Dianyi Liu
  3. Cristina López-Paz
  4. Bradley JSC Olson
  5. James G Umen  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Florida, United States
  2. Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, United States
  3. Kansas State University, United States

Abstract

Proliferating cells actively control their size by mechanisms that are poorly understood. The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii divides by multiple fission, wherein a 'counting' mechanism couples mother cell-size to cell division number allowing production of uniform-sized daughters. We identified a sizer protein, CDKG1, that acts through the retinoblastoma (RB) tumor suppressor pathway as a D-cyclin-dependent RB kinase to regulate mitotic counting. Loss of CDKG1 leads to fewer mitotic divisions and large daughters, while mis-expression of CDKG1 causes supernumerous mitotic divisions and small daughters. The concentration of nuclear-localized CDKG1 in pre-mitotic cells is set by mother cell size, and its progressive dilution and degradation with each round of cell division may provide a link between mother cell-size and mitotic division number. Cell-size-dependent accumulation of limiting cell cycle regulators such as CDKG1 is a potentially general mechanism for size control.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Yubing Li

    Plant Molecular and Cell Biology Program, the Horticultural and Plant Science Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Dianyi Liu

    Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Cristina López-Paz

    Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Bradley JSC Olson

    Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Program, and the Ecological Genomics Institute, The Division of Biology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. James G Umen

    Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, United States
    For correspondence
    jumen@danforthcenter.org
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Copyright

© 2016, Li et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 3,405
    views
  • 848
    downloads
  • 59
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Citations by DOI

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Yubing Li
  2. Dianyi Liu
  3. Cristina López-Paz
  4. Bradley JSC Olson
  5. James G Umen
(2016)
A new class of cyclin dependent kinase in Chlamydomonas is required for coupling cell size to cell division
eLife 5:e10767.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10767

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10767