ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Microtubule nucleation remote from centrosomes may explain how asters span large cells.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- OpticalFlow3D - a tool for measuring amorphous motion in three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy images.Journal of cell science · 2026Article
- Article
- A mechanical ratchet drives unilateral cytokinesis.Nature · 2026Article
- An acentrosomal aster with atypical microtubule polarity recruits cytokinesis signals to its center in Xenopus egg extracts.Journal of cell science · 2025Article
- Episodic transport of protein aggregates achieves a positive size selectivity in aggresome formation.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dynein-dependent collection of membranes defines the architecture and position of microtubule asters in isolated, geometrically confined volumes of cell-free extracts.Molecular biology of the cell · 2022Article
- Generation of stable microtubule superstructures by binding of peptide-fused tetrameric proteins to inside and outside.Science advances · 2022Article
- Multiple asters organize the yolk microtubule network during dclk2-GFP zebrafish epiboly.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Self-Organization of Cellular Units.Annual review of cell and developmental biology · 2021Review
- Reconstitution of muscle cell microtubule organization in vitro.Cytoskeleton (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2021Article
- Review
- Spatial variation of microtubule depolymerization in large asters.Molecular biology of the cell · 2021Article
- Article
- Microtubule-dependent pushing forces contribute to long-distance aster movement and centration inMolecular biology of the cell · 2020Article
- PLK1- and PLK4-Mediated Asymmetric Mitotic Centrosome Size and Positioning in the Early Zebrafish Embryo.Current biology : CB · 2020Article
- Nonlinear Elastic and Inelastic Properties of Cells.Journal of biomechanical engineering · 2020Review
- Cell Biology: Social Distancing of Microtubule Ends Increases Their Assembly Rates.Current biology : CB · 2020Article
- Microtubule Growth Rates Are Sensitive to Global and Local Changes in Microtubule Plus-End Density.Current biology : CB · 2020Article
- A semi-automated machine learning-aided approach to quantitative analysis of centrosomes and microtubule organization.Journal of cell science · 2020Article
- Conformational diversity of dynactin sidearm and domain organization of its subunit p150.Molecular biology of the cell · 2020Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
A major challenge in cell biology is to understand how nanometer-sized molecules can organize micrometer-sized cells in space and time. One solution in many animal cells is a radial array of microtubules called an aster, which is nucleated by a central organizing center and spans the entire cytoplasm. Frog (here Xenopus laevis) embryos are more than 1 mm in diameter and divide with a defined geometry every 30 min. Like smaller cells, they are organized by asters, which grow, interact, and move to precisely position the cleavage planes. It has been unclear whether asters grow to fill the enormous egg by the same mechanism used in smaller somatic cells, or whether special mechanisms are required. We addressed this question by imaging growing asters in a cell-free system derived from eggs, where asters grew to hundreds of microns in diameter. By tracking marks on the lattice, we found that microtubules could slide outward, but this was not essential for rapid aster growth. Polymer treadmilling did not occur. By measuring the number and positions of microtubule ends over time, we found that most microtubules were nucleated away from the centrosome and that interphase egg cytoplasm supported spontaneous nucleation after a time lag. We propose that aster growth is initiated by centrosomes but that asters grow by propagating a wave of microtubule nucleation stimulated by the presence of preexisting microtubules.
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