scholarly journals IFT88 controls NuMA enrichment at k-fibers minus-ends to facilitate their reincorporation into mitotic spindles

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Taulet ◽  
Audrey Douanier ◽  
Benjamin Vitre ◽  
Christelle Anguille ◽  
Justine Maurin ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTTo build and maintain mitotic spindle architecture, molecular motors exert spatially regulated forces on microtubules (MT) minus-ends. This spatial regulation is required to allow proper chromosomes alignment through the organization of kinetochore fibers (k-fibers). NuMA was recently shown to target dynactin to MT minus-ends and thus to spatially regulate dynein activity. However, given that k-fibers are embedded in the spindle, our understanding of the machinery involved in the targeting of proteins to their minus-ends remains limited. Intraflagellar transport (IFT) proteins were primarily studied for their ciliary roles but they also emerged as key regulators of cell division. Taking advantage of MT laser ablation, we show here that IFT88 concentrates at k-fibers minus-ends and is required for their re-anchoring into spindles by controlling NuMA accumulation. Indeed, IFT88 interacts with NuMA and is required for its enrichment at newly generated k-fibers minus-ends. Combining nocodazole washout experiments and IFT88 depletion, we further show that IFT88 is required for the reorganization of k-fibers into spindles and thus for efficient chromosomes alignment in mitosis. Overall, we propose that IFT88 could serve as a mitotic MT minus-end adaptor to concentrate NuMA at minus-ends thus facilitating k-fibers incorporation into the main spindle.

2010 ◽  
Vol 188 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-9
Author(s):  
Ramsey A. Saleem ◽  
John D. Aitchison

Cell division depends critically on the temporally controlled assembly of mitotic spindles, which are responsible for the distribution of duplicated chromosomes to each of the two daughter cells. To gain insight into the process, Vizeacoumar et al., in this issue (Vizeacoumar et al. 2010. J. Cell Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.200909013), have combined systems genetics with high-throughput and high-content imaging to comprehensively identify and classify novel components that contribute to the morphology and function of the mitotic spindle.


Open Biology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 180263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Hart ◽  
Ihsan Zulkipli ◽  
Roshan Lal Shrestha ◽  
David Dang ◽  
Duccio Conti ◽  
...  

Tissue maintenance and development requires a directed plane of cell division. While it is clear that the division plane can be determined by retraction fibres that guide spindle movements, the precise molecular components of retraction fibres that control spindle movements remain unclear. We report MARK2/Par1b kinase as a novel component of actin-rich retraction fibres. A kinase-dead mutant of MARK2 reveals MARK2's ability to monitor subcellular actin status during interphase. During mitosis, MARK2's localization at actin-rich retraction fibres, but not the rest of the cortical membrane or centrosome, is dependent on its activity, highlighting a specialized spatial regulation of MARK2. By subtly perturbing the actin cytoskeleton, we reveal MARK2's role in correcting mitotic spindle off-centring induced by actin disassembly. We propose that MARK2 provides a molecular framework to integrate cortical signals and cytoskeletal changes in mitosis and interphase.


1989 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-423
Author(s):  
R.B. Nicklas ◽  
G.M. Lee ◽  
C.L. Rieder ◽  
G. Rupp

We have discovered an easy way to cut through the mitotic spindle at any desired place. Spindles of demembranated cricket or grasshopper spermatocytes were severed with a microneedle between the chromosomes and one pole, and the cut-off polar piece was swept away. Spindle structure and microtubule dynamics in cut spindles were studied by anti-tubulin immunostaining and electron microscopy. The cut is clean: all microtubules are severed and only a few extend beyond the others. This provides the basis for a clear test of whether traction fibers pull chromosomes to the pole in anaphase, because the putative traction fiber is cleanly severed. Cutting creates new plus ends on microtubules in the cut-off polar piece and new minus ends on microtubules in the main spindle body. The microtubules with new plus ends are unstable, as expected from the dynamic instability of microtubules. However, the microtubules with new minus ends are as stable as uncut microtubules in the same spindle. Our mechanical method of cutting microtubules very likely creates native, reactive ends, and therefore the surprising stability of new minus ends is genuinely interesting, not an artifact of cutting.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Ramirez ◽  
Ankur A. Gholkar ◽  
Erick F. Velasquez ◽  
Xiao Guo ◽  
Jorge Z. Torres

ABSTRACTMyosins are ATP-dependent actin-based molecular motors critical for diverse cellular processes like intracellular trafficking, cell motility and cell invasion. During cell division, myosin MYO10 is important for proper mitotic spindle assembly, the anchoring of the spindle to the cortex, and positioning of the spindle to the cell mid-plane, while myosin MYO2 functions in actomyosin ring contraction to promote cytokinesis. However, myosins are regulated by myosin regulatory light chains (RLCs), and whether RLCs are important for cell division has remained unexplored. Here, we have determined that the previously uncharacterized myosin RLC Myl5 associates with the mitotic spindle and is required for cell division. Myl5 localized to the mitotic spindle poles and spindle microtubules during early mitosis, an area overlapping with MYO10 localization. Depletion of Myl5 led to defects in chromosome congression and to a slower progression through mitosis. We propose that Myl5 is a novel myosin RLC that is important for cell division.


Genetics ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 149 (3) ◽  
pp. 1303-1321
Author(s):  
Kevin F O'Connell ◽  
Charles M Leys ◽  
John G White

Abstract A novel screen to isolate conditional cell-division mutants in Caenorhabditis elegans has been developed. The screen is based on the phenotypes associated with existing cell-division mutations: some disrupt postembryonic divisions and affect formation of the gonad and ventral nerve cord—resulting in sterile, uncoordinated animals—while others affect embryonic divisions and result in lethality. We obtained 19 conditional mutants that displayed these phenotypes when shifted to the restrictive temperature at the appropriate developmental stage. Eighteen of these mutations have been mapped; 17 proved to be single alleles of newly identified genes, while 1 proved to be an allele of a previously identified gene. Genetic tests on the embryonic lethal phenotypes indicated that for 13 genes, embryogenesis required maternal expression, while for 6, zygotic expression could suffice. In all cases, maternal expression of wild-type activity was found to be largely sufficient for embryogenesis. Cytological analysis revealed that 10 mutants possessed embryonic cell-division defects, including failure to properly segregate DNA, failure to assemble a mitotic spindle, late cytokinesis defects, prolonged cell cycles, and improperly oriented mitotic spindles. We conclude that this approach can be used to identify mutations that affect various aspects of the cell-division cycle.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parsa Zareiesfandabadi ◽  
Mary Williard Elting

AbstractA microtubule-based machine called the mitotic spindle segregates chromosomes when eukaryotic cells divide. In the fission yeast S. pombe, which undergoes closed mitosis, the spindle forms a single bundle of microtubules inside the nucleus. During elongation, the spindle extends via antiparallel microtubule sliding by molecular motors. These extensile forces from the spindle are thought to resist compressive forces from the nucleus. We probe the mechanism and maintenance of this force balance via laser ablation of spindles at various stages of mitosis. We find that spindle pole bodies collapse toward each other following ablation, but spindle geometry is often rescued, allowing spindles to resume elongation and segregate chromosomes. While this basic behavior has been previously observed, many questions remain about this phenomenon’s dynamics, mechanics, and molecular requirements. In this work, we find that previously hypothesized viscoelastic relaxation of the nucleus cannot fully explain spindle shortening in response to laser ablation. Instead, spindle collapse requires microtubule dynamics and is powered at least partly by the minus-end directed motor protein dynein. These results suggest a role for dynein in redundantly supporting force balance and bipolarity in the S. pombe spindle.


Author(s):  
Kent McDonald ◽  
David Mastronarde ◽  
Rubai Ding ◽  
Eileen O'Toole ◽  
J. Richard McIntosh

Mammalian spindles are generally large and may contain over a thousand microtubules (MTs). For this reason they are difficult to reconstruct in three dimensions and many researchers have chosen to study the smaller and simpler spindles of lower eukaryotes. Nevertheless, the mammalian spindle is used for many experimental studies and it would be useful to know its detailed structure.We have been using serial cross sections and computer reconstruction methods to analyze MT distributions in mitotic spindles of PtK cells, a mammalian tissue culture line. Images from EM negatives are digtized on a light box by a Dage MTI video camera containing a black and white Saticon tube. The signal is digitized by a Parallax 1280 graphics device in a MicroVax III computer. Microtubules are digitized at a magnification such that each is 10-12 pixels in diameter.


Author(s):  
J. Holy ◽  
G. Schatten

One of the classic limitations of light microscopy has been the fact that three dimensional biological events could only be visualized in two dimensions. Recently, this shortcoming has been overcome by combining the technologies of laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) and computer processing of microscopical data by volume rendering methods. We have employed these techniques to examine morphogenetic events characterizing early development of sea urchin embryos. Specifically, the fourth cleavage division was examined because it is at this point that the first morphological signs of cell differentiation appear, manifested in the production of macromeres and micromeres by unequally dividing vegetal blastomeres.The mitotic spindle within vegetal blastomeres undergoing unequal cleavage are highly polarized and develop specialized, flattened asters toward the micromere pole. In order to reconstruct the three-dimensional features of these spindles, both isolated spindles and intact, extracted embryos were fluorescently labeled with antibodies directed against either centrosomes or tubulin.


Development ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 599-606
Author(s):  
S.T. Bissen ◽  
C.M. Smith

Leech embryos undergo invariant sequences of equal and unequal cell divisions to give rise to identifiable progeny cells. While many of the early cleavages are under maternal control, the divisions of a subset of early blastomeres (the large cells of the D' lineage) are perturbed after the inhibition of zygotic transcription. Analysis of the different types of cells produced in embryos injected with the transcriptional inhibitor, alpha-amanitin, revealed that the symmetry of cell division is perturbed in these large D'-derived cells during this early period of development. These cells, which would normally undergo a series of equal and unequal cleavages, always undergo equal cleavages after the inhibition of zygotic transcription. It appears that zygotically transcribed gene product(s) are required in the large cells of the D' lineage to orient the mitotic spindles properly for these unequal cell cleavages.


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