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Updated: May 19, 2026

Spatiotemporal Analysis of Cytokinetic Events in Fission Yeast
Published on: February 20, 2017
Stuck in the middle: Rac, adhesion, and cytokinesis
1Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Abstract:
Rho family small GTPases (Rac, RhoA, and Cdc42) function at the core of cytokinesis, the physical division of one cell into two. In this issue, Bastos et al. (2012. J. Cell Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201204107) identify a new role for Rac inhibition: to release cell adhesion at the division plane and allow efficient constriction of the contractile ring. They show that the GTPase-activating protein, CYK4, suppresses equatorial cell substrate adhesion by inhibiting Rac and therefore its effectors ARFGEF7 and PAK1/2.
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