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Abstract
Cells of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, normally sausage-shaped, changed to a round-bottomed flask (RBF)-like morphology during growth in the presence of aculeacin A (Acu), an antifungal antibiotic. The volume of RBF-like cells was comparable to that of the control cells. After being transferred to normal conditions (without Acu at 25°C), the RBF-like cells continued to grow at the cylindrical and/or spherical end(s) and then the septum at the subsequent division of the cells was formed without exception at the boundary plane between the spheroidal and the cylindrical region; it is at this boundary that the nucleus was located before mitosis. Hence the RBF-like cell divided into a spheroidal and a cylindrical sib at the first cell division. At the end of the second cell cycle, the spheroidal and the cylindrical progeny divided into two spheroidal and two cylindrical sibs respectively. The values of the mean length (long/short) and volume (big/small) ratios of paired sibs were larger in order of (a) cylindrical normal, with both mean ratios 1·06; (b) cylindrical control; (c) cylindrical progeny of RBF-like cell; (d) spheroidal progeny of RBF-like cell; and (e) RBF-like cell, whose mean length ratio was 1·25 but whose mean volume ratio was 1·94. That is, the more the morphology deviated from the cylindrical form, the greater was the degree of asymmetry. There was no rule relating the biases to the growth pole in these asymmetries.
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