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A key component of cell division comes to light

By 30 de June de 2014November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 30.06.2014

A key component of cell division comes to light

A breakthrough at IRB Barcelona –based in the PCB–fills a knowledge gap in understanding how the cell division apparatus, the mitotic spindle, is formed. The Advanced Digital Microscopy Facility, a joint IRB Barcelona-Barcelona Science Park Facility run by the IRB physicist Julien Colombelli, has been crucial for setting up the technology required. The in vivo visualization and monitoring of the starting points of microtubules — filaments responsible for organising the mitotic spindle — provides novel insight into the dynamic architecture of this structure. The findings will also contribute to understanding how the mitotic spindle is perturbed by drugs that target microtubules and that are used in chemotherapy.


The division of a cell in two requires the assembly of the mitotic spindle, an extremely complex structure, which is the result of the coordinated action of a multitude of proteins and a finely tuned balance of their activities. A large part of the time that a cell requires to divide is devoted to assembling the mitotic spindle, which, superficially, resembles a ball of thread with the shape of a rugby ball.

The most abundant components of the spindle are the microtubules. “By labelling the ends of thousands of these fine filaments, which are indispensable and extremely dynamic and variable, we have finally been able to follow their distribution and movement during the assembly of the mitotic spindle,” explains Jens Lüders, a cell biologist from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). The breakthrough appeared yesterday in the advanced online edition of the journal Nature Cell Biology.

“For more than 10 years we have been able to track only the growing ends of microtubules but not the starting points. As a result, we lacked essential information in order to understand the dynamic architecture of the mitotic spindle and how it contributes to cell division,” says Lüders. Headed by the German scientist who runs the Microtubule Organisation group at IRB Barcelona, the study carries only two names, his own and that of the French researcher Nicolas Lecland, first author, who completed his PhD at IRB Barcelona through a “la Caixa” fellowship.

the breakthrough paves the way to “better” understanding the mode of action of drugs that inhibit microtubules and that are used in chemotherapy. These kinds of drugs impede the mitotic spindle, thus preventing cell division and interfering with tumour growth.

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