Functional identification of cytokinesis-related genes from tobacco BY-2 cells

The molecular mechanisms controlling cytokinesis in plant cell division cycle remains largely unknown. In this study, a functional approach was taken to identify genes that may play roles in cytokinesis in tobacco BY-2 cells, using fission yeast as the host organism. A total of 22 BY-2 genes that perturbed the terminal stage of cell division when ectopically expressed in yeast cells were isolated, among which, several encode for uncharacterized genes. Additionally, RT-PCR analysis indicated that four of the isolated genes were expressed in a cell cycle-dependent manner. Our results demonstrate that fission yeast system can be efficiently used to identify the genes that may function, either positively or negatively, in the regulation of cytokinesis. More importantly, the candidate genes we have isolated in this work can provide useful information for unraveling the regulators controlling cell separation at the late stage of BY-2 cell division. Yi Yu and Hai-Yun Wang contributed equally to this work.