Lineage-dependent mating-type transposition in fission and budding yeast.

The basis of cellular differentiation is perhaps best understood in the yeast mating-type switching system. The yeast cell produces daughter cells that differ from each other or from their parent cell via developmentally regulated genomic rearrangements. Recent experiments on cell-type determination in fission yeast have revealed that this process is determined by the inheritance of specific parental chromosome strands by the progeny cells.