Secretion is required for late events in the cell-fusion pathway of mating yeast

Secretory vesicles accumulate adjacent to the contact site between the two cells of a yeast mating pair before they fuse, but there is no direct evidence that secretion is required to complete fusion. In this study, temperature-sensitive secretion (sec^ts) mutants were used to investigate the role of secretion in yeast cell fusion. Cell fusion arrested less than 5 minutes after inhibiting secretion. This rapid fusion arrest was not an indirect consequence of reduced mating pheromone signaling, mating-pair assembly or actin polarity. Furthermore, secretion was required to complete cell fusion when it was transiently inhibited by addition and removal of the lipophilic styryl dye, FM4-64. These results indicate that ongoing secretion is required for late events in the cell-fusion pathway, which include plasma-membrane fusion and the completion of cell-wall remodeling, and they demonstrate a just-in-time delivery mechanism for the cell-fusion machinery.