The losses of Lem2 and Bqt4 exhibit similar impacts on intracellular movement dynamics in fission yeast.
Quantifying movement dynamics inside a cell provides a deeper understanding of cellular functions. The 3-dimensional live observation has been widely applied to movement dynamics research. Fission yeast is an ideal model organism for studying cellular movement dynamics. In this study, we developed a novel method to quantify intracellular movement in wild-type cells, using a vector originating from the cell center as the movement reference. This method obtained more movement information, including movement direction, compared to the previously reported method, which used a single point as the movement reference. Using this new method, we quantified intracellular movement in wild type, bqt4Δ, and lem2Δ cells across various parameters. We characterized the nature of intracellular movement in wild-type cells and revealed that the losses of Bqt4 and Lem2, two inner membrane proteins, impact intracellular movement in a similar pattern, although distinct differences were also observed. These findings offer new insights into the study of the overlapping and distinct functions of Bqt4 and Lem2. This study provides a novel method for evaluating the intracellular movement dynamics, contributing to the understanding of intracellular movement nature, biophysical properties, and the evaluation of genes or proteins from an intracellular movement perspective.
Wang K, Ueno M