Mitochondria are highly dynamic organelles that undergo permanent fusion and fission, a process that is important for mitochondrial function and cellular survival. Emerging evidence suggests that oxidative stress disturbs mitochondrial morphology dynamics, resulting in detrimental mitochondrial fragmentation. In particular, such fatal mitochondrial fission has been detected in neurons exposed t...

Mitochondria are dynamic organelles that change their morphology by active fusion and fission in response to cellular signaling and differentiation. The in vivo role of mitochondrial fission in mammals has been examined by using tissue-specific knockout (KO) mice of the mitochondria fission-regulating GTPase Drp1, as well as analyzing a human patient harboring a point mutation in Drp1, showing ...

Vital cellular processes, from cell growth to synaptic transmission, rely on membrane-bounded carriers and vesicles to transport molecular cargo to and from specific intracellular compartments throughout the cell. Compartment-specific proteins are required for the final step, membrane fission, which releases the transport carrier from the intracellular compartment. The role of fission proteins,...

Mitochondrial fission is a highly regulated process mediated by a defined set of protein factors and is involved in the early stage of apoptosis. In mammals, at least two proteins, the dynamin-like protein DLP1/Drp1 and the mitochondrial outer membrane protein hFis1, participate in mitochondrial fission. The cytosolic domain of hFis1 contains six alpha-helices that form two tetratricopeptide re...

Structural effects in fission-product yields and neutron data for a large number of fissioning nuclei between Th and Rf from spontaneous fission to 14MeV-neutron-induced fission have been used to deduce information on the properties of the fissioning systems. Macroscopic properties are attributed to the compound nucleus, while fission channels are ascribed to shells in the nascent fragments. Us...

Mitochondria are highly-dynamic organelles, but it is challenging to monitor quantitatively their dynamics in a living cell. Here we developed a novel approach to determine the global occurrence of mitochondrial fission and fusion events in living human epithelial cells (Hela) and mouse embryonic fibroblast cells (MEF). Distinct patterns of sequential events including fusion followed by fission...

A brief description of our improvements and refinements that led from the CEM95 version of the CascadeExciton Model (CEM) code to CEM97 and to CEM2k is given. The increased accuracy and predictive power of the code CEM2k are shown by several examples. To describe fission and light-fragment (heavier than He) production, the CEM2k code has been merged with the GEM2 code of Furihata. We present so...

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Mitochondrial division requires coordinated interactions among Fis1p, Mdv1p, and the Dnm1p GTPase, which assemble into fission complexes on the outer mitochondrial membrane. The integral outer membrane protein Fis1p contains a cytoplasmic domain consisting of a tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR)-like fold and a short NH(2)-terminal helix. Although it is known that the cytoplasmic domain is necessar...

Mitochondrial fission controls mitochondrial shape and physiology, including mitochondrial remodeling in apoptosis. During assembly of the yeast mitochondrial fission complex, the outer membrane protein Fis1 recruits the dynamin-related GTPase Dnm1 to mitochondria. Fis1 contains a tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) domain and interacts with Dnm1 via the molecular adaptors Mdv1 and Caf4. By using cr...