Recovery from Pheromone-induced Arrest of the Yeast Cell Cycle: α-Factor Binding and Mutants That Show Pheromone-independent Arrest of Cell Division
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The ability of yeast cells to respond to peptide pheromones provides a model system for hormone action and signal transduction. Haploid α cells mate and fuse with haploid a cells to give rise to diploid cells. Each haploid cell type produces a pheromone (α-factor or a-factor) that acts on target cells of the opposite mating type (Sprague et al. 1983a). This reciprocal interaction between a and α cells appears to play an essential role in the mating process because mutant cells that are unable to synthesize pheromones are mating-incompetent (Kurjan 1985). Pheromones elicit a number of specific changes in the target cell: (1) the arrest of the mitotic cycle in G1 (Hartwell 1973); (2) the alteration of cellular morphology; (3) the production of cell-surface agglutinins that promote adhesion of a and α cells; (4) the induction of activities that degrade the cell wall during conjugation (McCaffrey et al. 1987; Trueheart...
