Cell cycle operation during batch growth of fission yeast populations.

Batch cultivation provides a continuous sequence of different environments useful for studying responses of cell cycle controls. Flow cytometry measurements have been made of the frequency functions for protein, RNA, and DNA at different times during batch growth of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The mean cellular protein and RNA contents and their variances tend to increase with increasing population specific growth rates. Analysis of the mid-exponential phase DNA frequency function data indicates that DNA synthesis occupies 12% of the total cell cycle time and is completed at the same time as cell separation. Coordination of DNA synthesis and cell separation is less precise when population growth rate is low in late lag and early stationary phases.