Synthetic lethal interactions identify phenotypic "interologs" of the spindle assembly checkpoint components.

Here, we report genetic interactions with mdf-1(gk2)/MAD1 in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nine are evolutionarily conserved or phenotypic "interologs" and two are novel enhancers, hcp-1 and bub-3. We show that HCP-1 and HCP-2, the two CENP-F-related proteins, recently implicated in the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) function, do not have identical functions, since hcp-1(RNAi), but not hcp-2(RNAi), enhances the lethality of the SAC mutants.