Testing Cyclin Specificity in the Exit from Mitosis

Cyclical inactivation of B-type cyclins has been proposed to be required for alternating DNA replication and mitosis. Destruction box-dependent Clb5p degradation is strongly increased in mitotic cells, and constitutive overexpression of Clb5p lacking the destruction box resulted in rapid accumulation of inviable cells, frequently multiply budded, with DNA contents ranging from unreplicated to apparently fully replicated. Loss of viability correlated with retention of nuclear Clb5p at the time of nuclear division. CLB2-Δdb overexpression that was quantitatively comparable to CLB5-Δdb overexpression with respect to Clb protein production and Clb-associated kinase activity resulted in a distinct phenotype: reversible mitotic arrest with uniformly replicated DNA. Simultaneous overexpression of CLB2-Δdb and CLB5-Δdb overexpressers similarly resulted in a uniform arrest with replicated DNA, and this arrest was significantly more reversible than that observed with CLB5-Δdb overexpression alone. These results suggest that Clb2p and not Clb5p can efficiently block mitotic completion. We speculate that CLB5-Δdb overexpression may be lethal, because persistence of high nuclear Clb5p-associated kinase throughout mitosis leads to failure to load origins of replication, thus preventing DNA replication in the succeeding cell cycle.