The overall goal is to establish the pathway for vacuole partitioning from mother cells to daughter cells. She plans to identify the macromolecules involved, to study how these components interact, and to determine how they are regulated. Specific aims are: (1) development of new techniques for the isolation of yeast mutants defective in vacuole segregation (vac mutants); (2) characterization of the vacuole segregation mutants; (3) analysis of the timing of vacuole segregation and examination of vacuolar changes that precede the formation of the segregation structure; (4) utilization of the vac mutants to clone the corresponding wild-type (VAC) genes; (5) sequence analysis and genetic disruption of genes required for vacuole segregation; and (6) characterization of VAC-encoded proteins.