RESEARCH ARTICLE Spatiotemporal recruitment of RhoGTPase protein GRAF inhibits actomyosin ring constriction in Drosophila cellularization Swati Sharma, Richa Rikhy* Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India Abstract Actomyosin contractility is regulated by Rho-GTP in cell migration, cytokinesis and morphogenesis in embryo development. Whereas Rho activation by Rho-GTP exchange factor (GEF), RhoGEF2, is well known in actomyosin contractility during cytokinesis at the base of invaginating membranes in Drosophila cellularization, Rho inhibition by RhoGTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) remains to be studied. We have found that the RhoGAP, GRAF, inhibits actomyosin contractility during cellularization. GRAF is enriched at the cleavage furrow tip during actomyosin assembly and initiation of ring constriction. Graf depletion shows increased Rho-GTP, increased Myosin II and ring hyper constriction dependent upon the loss of the RhoGTPase domain. GRAF and RhoGEF2 are present in a balance for appropriate activation of actomyosin ring constriction. RhoGEF2 depletion and abrogation of Myosin II activation in Rho kinase mutants suppress the Graf hyper constriction defect. Therefore, GRAF recruitment restricts Rho-GTP levels in a spatiotemporal manner for inhibiting actomyosin contractility during cellularization. Introduction *For correspondence: Metazoan embryogenesis involves a variety of cell shape changes during cytokinesis, cell migration
[email protected] and tissue morphogenesis (Agarwal and Zaidel-Bar, 2019; Heer and Martin, 2017; Kumar et al., 2015; Lecuit and Lenne, 2007; Levayer and Lecuit, 2012; St Johnston and Ahringer, 2010; Competing interests: The Yam et al., 2007). The cortical actomyosin activity is orchestrated with plasma membrane shape authors declare that no remodeling to generate localized forces to drive cell shape dynamics (Heer and Martin, 2017; competing interests exist.