| Title: | Mechanism of commitment to a mating partner in Saccharomyces cerevisiae |
| Author(s): | Jacobs KC; Gorman O; Lew DJ; |
| Address: | "Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1939-4586 (Electronic) 1059-1524 (Print) 1059-1524 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Many cells detect and follow gradients of chemical signals to perform their functions. Yeast cells use gradients of extracellular pheromones to locate mating partners, providing a tractable model for understanding how cells decode the spatial information in gradients. To mate, yeast cells must orient polarity toward the mating partner. Polarity sites are mobile, exploring the cell cortex until they reach the proper position, where they stop moving and 'commit' to the partner. A simple model to explain commitment posits that a high concentration of pheromone is detected only upon alignment of partner cells' polarity sites and causes polarity site movement to stop. Here we explore how yeast cells respond to partners that make different amounts of pheromone. Commitment was surprisingly robust to various pheromone levels, ruling out the simple model. We also tested whether adaptive pathways were responsible for the robustness of commitment, but our results show that cells lacking those pathways were still able to accommodate changes in pheromone. To explain this robustness, we suggest that the steep pheromone gradients near each mating partner's polarity site trap the polarity site in place" |
| Keywords: | Cell Communication Cell Polarity/physiology Mating Factor/metabolism Pheromones/metabolism *Saccharomyces cerevisiae/metabolism *Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins/metabolism; |
| Notes: | "MedlineJacobs, Katherine C Gorman, Olivia Lew, Daniel J eng T32 GM136627/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ R35 GM122488/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural 2022/08/11 Mol Biol Cell. 2022 Oct 1; 33(12):ar112. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E22-02-0043. Epub 2022 Aug 10" |
