Control of cell polarity in response to intra- and extracellular signals in budding yeast

Budding yeast serves as a powerful genetic model organism for studying the molecular mechanisms of cell polarity in single cells. Like other polarized eukaryotic cells, yeast cells possess polarity programs that regulate where they grow and divide. Establishment of a site of cell polarity may be conceptualized in several stages. First, cells mark a specific location at the cell surface for polarized cell growth and cell division. To define these sites, cells use intrinsic cues present in the cell or landmarks determined by extracellular signals such as morphogens. Second, these landmark proteins then recruit or activate polarity establishment proteins including small GTPases and their regulators. Positive and negative feedback mechanisms are required to transform these site-selection processes into a stable axis of polarity. Finally, these locally activated GTPase modules recruit and activate proteins that organize the actin cytoskeleton and cell growth. In this short review, we describe molecular pathways required to establish oriented cell polarity, and emphasize recent advances in defining positive and negative feedback mechanisms that together may translate an initially weak symmetry-breaking signal into a robust axis of polarity.