RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Visualizing the metazoan proliferation-differentiation decision in vivo JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2019.12.18.881888 DO 10.1101/2019.12.18.881888 A1 Abraham Q. Kohrman A1 Rebecca C. Adikes A1 Jayson J. Smith A1 Michael A. Q. Martinez A1 Taylor N. Medwig-Kinney A1 Nicholas J. Palmisano A1 Maria D. Sallee A1 Ononnah B. Ahmed A1 Nicholas Weeks A1 Nuri Kim A1 Simeiyun Liu A1 Wan Zhang A1 Ariel M. Pani A1 David Q. Matus YR 2019 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/12/19/2019.12.18.881888.abstract AB During organismal development, differential regulation of the cell cycle is critical to many cell biological processes, including cell fate specification and differentiation. While the mechanisms of cell cycle regulation are well studied, how control of the cell cycle is linked to differentiated cellular behavior remains poorly understood, mostly due to our inability to directly and precisely measure cell cycle state. In order to characterize cell cycle state live, we adapted a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) biosensor for in vivo use in the roundworm nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. The CDK biosensor measures the cytoplasmic-to-nuclear localization of a portion of human DNA Helicase B (DHB) fused to a fluorescent protein to assess cell cycle state. The dynamic localization of DHB results from phosphorylation of the biosensor by CDKs, thereby allowing for quantitative assessment of cell cycle state. We demonstrate here the use of this biosensor to quantify lineage-specific differences between cycling cells and to examine the proliferation-differentiation decision. Unlike other live cell imaging tools (e.g., FUCCI), we show that DHB can be used to distinguish between actively cycling cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and terminally differentiated cells exited in G0. Thus, we provide here a new resource to study the control and timing of the metazoan cell cycle during cell fate specification and differentiation.