Mitosis is a crucial stage in the cell cycle, controlled by a vast network of regulators responding to multiple internal and external factors. The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe demonstrates catastrophic mitotic phenotypes due to mutations or drug treatments. One of the factors provoking catastrophic mitosis is a disturbed lipid metabolism, resulting from, for example, mutations in the acetyl-CoA/biotin carboxylase (cut6), fatty acid synthase (fas2, also known as lsd1) or transcriptional regulator of lipid metabolism (cbf11) genes, as well as treatment with inhibitors of fatty acid synthesis. It has been previously shown that mitotic fidelity in lipid metabolism mutants can be partially rescued by ammonium chloride supplementation. In this study, we demonstrate that mitotic fidelity can be improved by multiple nitrogen sources. Moreover, this improvement is not limited to lipid metabolism disturbances but also applies to a number of unrelated mitotic mutants. Interestingly, the partial rescue is not achieved by restoring the lipid metabolism state, but rather indirectly. Our results highlight a novel role for nitrogen availability in mitotic fidelity.

Center for Inflammatory Skin Diseases Department of Dermatology and Allergy University Hospital Schleswig Holstein Campus Kiel Rosalind Franklin Straße 9 24105 Kiel Germany

Centre of Biosciences SAS Institute of Animal Biochemistry and Genetics Dúbravská cesta 9 840 05 Bratislava Slovak Republic

Department of Cell Biology Faculty of Science Charles University Viničná 7 128 00 Prague 2 Czechia

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Cbf11 and Mga2 function together to activate transcription of lipid metabolism genes and promote mitotic fidelity in fission yeast