Recruitment of the lipid kinase Mss4 to the meiotic spindle pole promotes prospore membrane formation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae .

Spore formation in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae , involves de novo creation of four prospore membranes, each of which surrounds a haploid nucleus resulting from meiosis. The meiotic outer plaque (MOP) is a meiosis-specific protein complex associated with each meiosis II spindle pole body (SPB). Vesicle fusion on the MOP surface creates an initial prospore membrane anchored to the SPB. Ady4 is a meiosis-specific MOP component that stabilizes the MOP-prospore membrane interaction. We show that Ady4 recruits the lipid kinase, Mss4, to the MOP. MSS4 over-expression suppresses the ady4∆ spore formation defect, suggesting that a specific lipid environment provided by Mss4 promotes maintenance of prospore membrane attachment to MOPs. The meiosis-specific Spo21 protein is an essential structural MOP component. We show that the Spo21 N-terminus contains an amphipathic helix that binds to prospore membranes. A mutant in SPO21 that removes positive charges from this helix shares phenotypic similarities to ady4∆ . We propose that Mss4 generates negatively charged lipids in prospore membranes that enhance binding by the positively charged N-terminus of Spo21, thereby providing a mechanism by which the MOP-prospore membrane interaction is stabilized.