Cell Cycle

[Wiks]

Hello,

I’m student in the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
I’m taking part in the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition.
http://2010.igem.org/Main_Page
Our project is to make fluorescent cells depending on the different phases of the cell cycle.
For this we need to know what are the durations of the phases of the cell cycle.
Do you know the duration of G1 and G2 phases for S.Plombe? It’s very important!

Thanks.

[JackBean]

I don’t think, you need to know the duration, but rather, which enzymes are transcribed at that phases

[sorin]

JackBean is absolutely right. For your purpose you don’t need to know the duration of any cell cycle phase. The cell cycle is a very complex network of lots of proteins, however major players are cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs). These enzymes (in budding yeast there is actually only one, propably also in the fission yeast S.pombe) are regulated by cyclins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclin). Different cyclin variants are only expressed during different cell cycle phases to enable the activation of the respective CDK (or determine a specific activity if there is only one CDK).
So to let cells shine in a specific phase of the cell cycle a good approach would be to make fusion constructs of a fluorescent protein and the different cyclins. If you have enough distinguishable reporters in yeast you can even put them all into one cell. By only using GFP you need of course to seperate the transformation events. Good luck for your competition!

[Author]

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