We apologize for the errors that occurred in the Summary of both the online and print versions of this paper. The corrections are detailed below.In line 1 of the Summary, Schizosaccaromyces pombe is incorrectly referred to as 'Saccharomyces pombe'. Correct version: Fission yeast (Schizosaccaromyces pombe) centromere DNA is organized in a central core region flanked on either side by a region of outer repeat (otr) sequences.In line 29 of the Summary, the word 'of' is missing. Correct version: The declustering of centromeres in mis6 cells correlated with loss of the Ndc80 kinetochore marker protein from the centromeres.In line 35 of the Summary, mis-segregation has been incorrectly changed to 'misaggregation'. Correct version: Time-lapse microscopy of live mis6 and nuf2-1 mutant cells in mitosis showed similar severe mis-segregation phenotypes whereas the rik1 mutants showed a mild cohesion defect.
Erratum IntroductionThe centromere in most species can be observed as a localized primary constriction of the metaphase chromosome. Centromeric DNA harbors a large protein complex, the kinetochore, which mediates the attachment of the chromosomes to the mitotic and meiotic spindle thereby ensuring proper chromosome segregation. Although centromeric DNA sequences have little homology between organisms, structurally the centromeres and kinetochores are similar between such distantly related species as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Drosophila melanogaster and humans (reviewed by Blower et al., 2002). Centromeric DNA in fission yeast occupies 40-100 kb on each chromosome, organized with a unique central core sequence (CC/cnt) (Chikashige et al., 1989;Clarke and Baum, 1990) flanked by inner (imr/B) and outer (otr/K+L) repeat arrays (Fig. 1A). The use of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) has established that the central core region is bound by proteins Cnp1 (fission yeast homologue of human CENP-A) Mis6 and Mis12 bind (Takahashi et al., 2000;Saitoh et al., 1997) and XMAP215 homologues, Dis1 and Mtc1/Alp14 (Garcia et al., 2001;Nakaseko et al., 2001). In contrast the outer repeated region is occupied by the chromodomain proteins Swi6 and Chp1 that are structural components of centromeric heterochromatin over the imr and otr repeats (Partridge et al., 2000). The passenger protein Bir1/Cut17 transiently associates with the imr and otr repeats and not with the central core region in mitosis ). Thus, the DNA sequence analysis that first revealed the symmetrical organization of S. pombe centromeres (Clarke et al., 1986;Chikashige et al., 1989) and the pattern of protein binding (established by ChIP analysis) to the central core and otr/imr regions suggested that the fission yeast centromeres are composed of two different domains. The contrasting phenotypes of mutants such as rik1 and swi6, with defects in heterochromatin Ekwall et al., 1996), as compared to mutants such as mis6, with defects in the central core (Saitoh et al., 1997), indicated that these two domains are functionally distinct. Interphase cen...