Journal of Biological Chemistry
Volume 282, Issue 15, 13 April 2007, Pages 11521-11529
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Membrane Transport, Structure, Function, and Biogenesis
Mitotic Phosphorylation of Dynamin-related GTPase Drp1 Participates in Mitochondrial Fission*

https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M607279200Get rights and content
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Organelles are inherited to daughter cells beyond dynamic changes of the membrane structure during mitosis. Mitochondria are dynamic entities, frequently dividing and fusing with each other, during which dynamin-related GTPase Drp1 is required for the fission reaction. In this study, we analyzed mitochondrial dynamics in mitotic mammalian cells. Although mitochondria in interphase HeLa cells are long tubular network structures, they are fragmented in early mitotic phase, and the filamentous network structures are subsequently reformed in the daughter cells. In marked contrast, tubular mitochondrial structures are maintained during mitosis in Drp1 knockdown cells, indicating that the mitochondrial fragmentation in mitosis requires mitochondrial fission by Drp1. Drp1 was specifically phosphorylated in mitosis by Cdk1/cyclin B on Ser-585. Exogenous expression of unphosphorylated mutant Drp1S585A led to reduced mitotic mitochondrial fragmentation. These results suggest that phosphorylation of Drp1 on Ser-585 promotes mitochondrial fission in mitotic cells.

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*

This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture of Japan, Core Research from Evolutional Science and Technology, and Takara Science Foundation. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Fig. S1A-C and Movies 1-5.