Left to right: Professor Yhong Hee Shim, PhD student Sunghee Yoon, and Dr. Ichiro Kawasaki
A research team led by Professor Yhong Hee Shim of the Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology has found that loss of the B-type cyclin cyb-1 in spermatogenesis leads to meiotic arrest of spermatocytes with mispositioned and multiplied centrosomes, showed that centrosome defects after depletion of SUN-1 resemble those of the cyb-1 knockdown, and described a dephosphorylation of SUN-1 in cyb-1-depleted spermatocytes. These results uncover a role for the B-type cyb-1 in the maintenance of correct centrosome position and number during spermatogenesis, possibly by regulating the nuclear envelope proteins SUN-1 through phosphorylation and via ZYG-12. This study was published in Journal of Cell Science, an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of cell biology published by The Company of Biologists. This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education.