Discovery of genes involved in mitosis, cell division, cell wall integrity and chromosome segregation through construction of Schizosaccharomyces pombe deletion strains.

The fission yeast model system Schizosaccharomyces pombe is used to study fundamental biological processes. To continue to fill gaps in the Sz. pombe gene deletion collection, we constructed a set of 90 haploid gene deletion strains covering many previously uncharacterized genes. To begin to understand the function of these genes, we exposed this collection of strains to a battery of stress conditions. Using this information in combination with microscopy, proteomics and mini-chromosome loss assays, we identified genes involved in cell wall integrity, cytokinesis, chromosome segregation and DNA metabolism. This subset of non-essential gene deletions will add to the toolkits available for the study of biological processes in Sz. pombe.