The fission yeast DASH complex is essential for satisfying the spindle assembly checkpoint induced by defects in the inner-kinetochore proteins.

Spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) is an evolutionarily conserved surveillance system for chromosome missegregation. We isolated fission yeast Hos2, a component of the Dam1/DASH complex, as a multicopy suppressor of temperature-sensitive (ts) growth of nnf1-495 mutant that exhibits the minichromosome instability (mis) phenotype, producing lethal aneuploids without prominent mitotic delay. It remains elusive why SAC is satisfied in mis mutants despite the occurrence of missegregation. We found that Hos2 binds to the inner-kinetochore regions in both prometaphase and metaphase. Hos2 is essential for kinetochore localization of Dis1, a microtubule (MT) associated Dis1/XMAP215/TOG family protein that is required for proper MT dynamics. Cells lacking DASH exhibit cold-sensitive (cs) growth with the defective in sister-chromatid disjoining (dis) phenotype, which is characterized by hyper-condensed sister-chromatid pairs and elongated spindle MTs. Although DASH-deficient cells are viable at high temperatures, DASH-deletion transforms all the inner-kinetochore mis mutants so far tested into a constitutively active state of SAC, leading to the dis phenotype. We also discovered that Hos2 over-expression commonly suppresses growth retardation in a variety of inner-kinetochore mutants. These genetic interactions highlight the DASH-action(s) in satisfying SAC when aneuploids are formed during mitosis in the inner-kinetochore-defective mis mutants.

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