RESEARCH ARTICLE PLK-1 promotes the merger of the parental genome into a single nucleus by triggering lamina disassembly Griselda Velez-Aguilera1, Sylvia Nkombo Nkoula1, Batool Ossareh-Nazari1, Jana Link2, Dimitra Paouneskou2, Lucie Van Hove1, Nicolas Joly1, Nicolas Tavernier1, Jean-Marc Verbavatz3, Verena Jantsch2, Lionel Pintard1* 1Programme Equipe Labe´llise´e Ligue Contre le Cancer - Team Cell Cycle & Development - Universite´ de Paris, CNRS, Institut Jacques Monod, Paris, France; 2Department of Chromosome Biology, Max Perutz Laboratories, University of Vienna, Vienna Biocenter, Vienna, Austria; 3Universite´ de Paris, CNRS, Institut Jacques Monod, Paris, France Abstract Life of sexually reproducing organisms starts with the fusion of the haploid egg and sperm gametes to form the genome of a new diploid organism. Using the newly fertilized Caenorhabditis elegans zygote, we show that the mitotic Polo-like kinase PLK-1 phosphorylates the lamin LMN-1 to promote timely lamina disassembly and subsequent merging of the parental genomes into a single nucleus after mitosis. Expression of non-phosphorylatable versions of LMN- 1, which affect lamina depolymerization during mitosis, is sufficient to prevent the mixing of the parental chromosomes into a single nucleus in daughter cells. Finally, we recapitulate lamina depolymerization by PLK-1 in vitro demonstrating that LMN-1 is a direct PLK-1 target. Our findings indicate that the timely removal of lamin is essential for the merging of parental chromosomes at the beginning of life in C. elegans and possibly also in humans, where a defect in this process might be fatal for embryo development. *For correspondence:
[email protected] Introduction Competing interests: The After fertilization, the haploid gametes of the egg and sperm have to come together to form the authors declare that no genome of a new diploid organism.