Recruitment of the lipid kinase Mss4 to the meiotic spindle pole promotes prospore membrane formation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Spore formation in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, involves de novo creation of four prospore membranes, each of which surrounds a haploid nucleus resulting from meiosis. The meiotic outer plaque (MOP) is a meiosis-specific protein complex associated with each meiosis II spindle pole body (SPB). Vesicle fusion on the MOP surface creates an initial prospore membrane anchored to the SPB. Ady4 is a meiosis-specific MOP component that stabilizes the MOP-prospore membrane interaction. We show that Ady4 recruits the lipid kinase, Mss4, to the MOP. MSS4 overexpression suppresses the ady4∆ spore formation defect, suggesting that a specific lipid environment provided by Mss4 promotes maintenance of prospore membrane attachment to MOPs. The meiosis-specific Spo21 protein is an essential structural MOP component. We show that the Spo21 N terminus contains an amphipathic helix that binds to prospore membranes. A mutant in SPO21 that removes positive charges from this helix shares phenotypic similarities to ady4∆. We propose that Mss4 generates negatively charged lipids in prospore membranes that enhance binding by the positively charged N terminus of Spo21, thereby providing a mechanism by which the MOP-prospore membrane interaction is stabilized.