Roles for the canonical polarity machinery in the de novo establishment of polarity in budding yeast spores.

Dormant budding yeast spores possess a single, stable cortical site that marks the location where polarized growth occurs upon dormancy exit. It was not known how the site forms or which molecules comprise it.Using fluorescently tagged proteins in living cells undergoing sporulation, the authors found proteins canonically involved in polarization of non-spore cells arriving at the polarity site in a choreographed manner and required for site function.These findings point to a distinct polarity mechanism from non-spore cells and raise new questions about polarity protein interactions with membranes that may be applicable to gametogenesis in other organisms.