A Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Chromatin-mediated Spindle Assembly

Overview

Journal Mol Biol Cell

Specialties Cell Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2022 Jan 25

PMID 35076260

Authors

Vikash Verma

Thomas J Maresca

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Formation of a bipolar spindle is required for the faithful segregation of chromosomes during cell division. Twenty-five years ago, a transformative insight into how bipolarity is achieved was provided by Rebecca Heald, Eric Karsenti, and colleagues in their landmark publication characterizing a chromatin-mediated spindle assembly pathway in which centrosomes and kinetochores were dispensable. The discovery revealed that bipolar spindle assembly is a self-organizing process where microtubules, which possess an intrinsic polarity, polymerize around chromatin and become sorted by mitotic motors into a bipolar structure. On the 25 anniversary of this seminal paper, we discuss what was known before, what we have learned since, and what may lie ahead in understanding the bipolar spindle.

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