This book on the molecular gearings of fission yeast is cordially dedicated to Carsten Bresch, Michi Egel-Mitani, Herbert Gutz, Paul Nurse, Amar Klar, and Urs Leupold. With these candid personalities - all influential to the casting of my pro fessional and private career - I had the good fortune of sharing coauthorship at very significant steps towards developing a sensible touch for the subtle charm of this wonderful model organism (Bresch et al. 1968; Egel and Egel-Mitani 1974; Egel and Gutz 1981; Beach et al. 1982; Egel et al. 1984; Leupold et al. 1989). As to the timing of the book, repeated queries from participants at our Copenha gen EMBO courses on Molecular Genetics with the Fission Yeast Schizosaccharo myces pombe have indicated that a collective treatise on this subject would be highly welcome. This initial impression was overwhelmingly confirmed by the en thusiastic consent I met among the prospective authors when I first approached them on specific contributions to present their field of expertise - as well as by the encouraging support expressed by the Springer-Verlag crew. A notable prede cessor of this treatise, "The first attempt to assemble the lore of fission yeast" (Nasim et al. 1989), roughly coincided with the pioneering breakthrough of link ing the major cyclin-dependent kinase of fission yeast to cell cycle timing in gen eral - later awarded by the Nobel Prize to Paul Nurse.

Fission Yeast in General Genetics

The Genome and Beyond
Protein Kinases Driving the Cell Cycle
Checkpoint Controls Halting the Cell Cycle
Stress Responses in S. pombe
DNA Replication in S. pombe
DNA Repair Pathways
The Retrotransposons of S. pombe
Mating-type Cassettes: Structure, Switching and Silencing
Centromere and Kinetochore Structure and Function
Chromosome Cohesion and Segregation
Telomere Organization and Nuclear Movements
The Mitotic Spindle and Genome Segregation
The Fission Yeast Actomyosin Cytoskeleton
Regulation of Cytokinesis
Control of Cell Polarity and Morphogenesis in Fission Yeast
Cell Wall Synthesis
Mating-type Control and Differentiation
Initiation of Meiosis
Control of Late Meiosis and Ascospore Formation
RNA Polymerases and Accessory Factors
Core Promoters in S. pombe: TATA and HomolD Boxes
Mechanism and Control of pre-mRNA Splicing
Transcription Termination
Ubiquitin-dependent Proteolysis by the Proteasome
Processing Proteases in S. pombe
Protein Glycosylation
Mitochondrial Genetics in a Petite-Negative Yeast
Fission Yeast Phylogenesis and Evolution