MECHANISMS OF FURROW FORMATION DURING CELL DIVISION

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This proposal requests support for a workshop to discuss the mechanisms of furrow formation during cell division. This meeting will be held during June 8-11, 1989, at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, Salisbury Cove, Maine. It will consist of approximately 25 invited speakers + approximately 25 invited auditors. Speakers will submit manuscripts to be published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Auditors will present posters. Cell division consists not only of division of genetic material in the nucleus (karyokinesis), but also of division of the cytoplasm (cytokinesis). Both of these processes require a functional mitotic apparatus. This structure consists largely of microtubules and is comprised of a spindle and two sets of astral rays. Chromosome separation on the spindle has been the subject of previous meetings. However, the mechanisms by which the asters and/or the spindle stimulate the cortical cytoplasm to form a furrow and the biochemical steps by which that furrow then proceeds to constrict a cell in half have not been discussed in earlier symposia. Recent advances have been made in understanding microtubule and microfilament structure and function, in perturbing the genes for some of the component proteins, for following the incorporation of fluorescently labeled proteins into cleavage furrows, for measuring changes in intracellular concentrations of Ca2+, and for using computer models to predict the consequences of cellular manipulations. The investigators who have made these advances are in the U.S., Japan, England, and Canada, and many have never met. Our understanding of cytokinesis will be sharply stimulated by assembling these investigators for a workshop and publishing a unified set of papers dealing with mechanisms.