The Das lab published their latest paper Cdc42 GEF, Gef1, through endocytosis organizes F-BAR Cdc15 along the actomyosin ring and promotes concentric furrowing in Journal of Cell Science. In this paper they provide a mechanistic understanding of how during cytokinesis, cells form a membrane furrow centripetally. They show that blocking endocytosis during cytokinesis does not stop actomyosin ring formation, but these rings do not constrict and do not form a furrow. Endocytosis promotes uniform protein organization along the assembled ring and this enables centripetal or concentric constriction. To validate their findings, they present a mathematical model developed in collaboration with the lab of Steven Abel from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Tennessee. The first author of this paper is Udo Onwubiko, a third-year graduate student in the BCMB department.
