PMID:21076413

Citation	O'Rourke, SM, Christensen, SN and Bowerman, B (2010) Caenorhabditis elegans EFA-6 limits microtubule growth at the cell cortex. Nat. Cell Biol. 12:1235-41
Abstract	Microtubules are polymers of tubulin heterodimers that exhibit dynamic instability: periods of growth followed by periods of shrinkage. However, the molecular regulation of dynamic instability remains elusive. Here, we show that EFA-6, a cortically-localized protein, limits the growth of microtubules near the cell cortex of early embryonic cells from Caenorhabditis elegans, possibly by inducing microtubule catastrophes. Compared with wild type, embryos lacking EFA-6 had abnormally long and dense microtubules at the cell cortex, and growing microtubule plus ends resided at the cortex for up to five-fold longer. Loss of EFA-6 also caused excess centrosome separation and displacement towards the cell cortex early in mitosis, and subsequently a loss of anaphase spindle-pole oscillations and increased rates of spindle elongation. The centrosome separation phenotype was dependent on the motor protein dynein, suggesting a possible link between the modulation of microtubule dynamics at the cortex and dynein-dependent force production. EFA-6 orthologues activate ARF6-type GTPases to regulate vesicle trafficking. However, we show that only the C. elegans EFA-6 amino-terminus is both necessary and sufficient to limit microtubule growth along the cortex, and that this function is independent of ARF-6.
Links	PubMed PMC3236679 Online version:10.1038/ncb2128
Keywords	Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; Caenorhabditis elegans/cytology; Caenorhabditis elegans/embryology; Caenorhabditis elegans/metabolism; Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins/metabolism; Centrosome/metabolism; Embryo, Nonmammalian/metabolism; Microtubules/metabolism; Molecular Sequence Data; Sequence Alignment
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Annotations

Gene product	Qualifier	GO Term	Evidence Code	with/from	Aspect	Extension	Notes	Status
CAEEL:EFA6	involved_in	GO:0070507: regulation of microtubule cytoskeleton organization	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
CAEEL:EFA6	part_of	GO:0005938: cell cortex	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		C		Seeded From UniProt	complete
CAEEL:EFA6	involved_in	GO:0046602: regulation of mitotic centrosome separation	ECO:0000315: mutant phenotype evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
CAEEL:EFA6	involved_in	GO:1902845: negative regulation of mitotic spindle elongation	ECO:0000315: mutant phenotype evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
CAEEL:EFA6	involved_in	GO:0007019: microtubule depolymerization	ECO:0000315: mutant phenotype evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
CAEEL:EFA6	involved_in	GO:0007077: mitotic nuclear envelope disassembly	ECO:0000315: mutant phenotype evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
CAEEL:Q9XXA2	part_of	GO:0005938: cell cortex	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		C		Seeded From UniProt	complete

References

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