Meiosis is the only exception to a regular cell cycle since there are two nuclear divisions (Meiosis I and Meiosis II) without an intervening DNA synthesis.S. pombe cells require a meiotic-specific splicing program to express proteins that are only required during meiosis. We have recently shown that part of this splicing program depends on two proteins of the Forkhead family (Fkh2 and Mei4).We have set up a system that allows the chemical induction of synchronous meiosis.The great advantage of this new system is that it can be combined with all the temperature-sensitive alleles of splicing factors, which allows the individual determination of the role of each factor in the meiotic splicing program. For example, we are now involved in the characterization of the role of U2AF65^Prp2 in the regulation of splicing during meiosis.

Main articles

Moldón, A. et al. (2008) Promoter-driven splicing regulation in fission yeast. Nature 455:997-1000.

Guerra-Moreno, A. et al. (2012) Chemical genetic induction of meiosis in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Cell Cycle 11:1620-1624.

Eckert, D. et al. (2016) Prp4 kinase grants the license to splice: control of weak splice sites during spliceosome activation. PLoS Genet. 12:e1005768.

Alves-Rodrigues, I. et al. (2016) Spatiotemporal control of forkheads binding to DNA regulates the meiotic gene expression program. Cell Reports 14:885-895.

Hummer, S., Borao, S., Guerra-Moreno, A., Cozzuto, L. Hidalgo, E. and Ayté, J. (2021) Cross talk between the upstream exon-intron junction and Prp2 facilitates splicing of non-consensus intron.  Cell Reports 37:109893.