|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
| Home Help Feedback Subscriptions Archive Search Table of Contents | |||||
First published online May 24, 2006
In this issue |
|
Toxoplasma gondii, like other Apicomplexan parasites, divides by internal budding: two daughter cells form as buds within the mother cell on a cytoskeletal scaffold, acquire a set of organelles and then emerge. How the cytoskeleton and various endomembranes interact during this process is poorly understood. Now, Marc-Jan Gubbels, Boris Striepen and co-authors report that the MORN-repeat protein MORN1 is a dynamic component of the division apparatus that could play a role (see p. 2236).
MORN (for membrane occupation and recognition nexus) motifs are found in proteins that help organize membranous and cytoskeletal structures. The authors show that, in dividing T. gondii, MORN1 localizes to the centrocone, which organizes the mitotic spindle, and to a ring structure at both ends of the barrel-shaped inner membrane complex (IMC), which delineates the forming daughters. Strikingly, the posterior ring moves along the IMC during mitosis and division and contracts during the final stage of budding. The authors suggest that MORN1 links specific membrane regions of T. gondii to its cytoskeleton during the division process and that microtubular growth moves the MORN1-associated ring.
Related articles in JCS:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
