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The spindle apparatus is vaguely ellipsoid in cross section and tapers at the ends. In the wide middle portion, known as the spindle midzone, antiparallel microtubules are bundled by kinesins. At the pointed ends, known as spindle poles, microtubules are nucleated by the centrosomes in most animal cells.
These microtubules form direct connections with the kinetochores in the mitotic spindle. Each K fiber is composed of 20–40 parallel microtubules, forming a strong tube which is attached at one end to the centrosome and on the other to the kinetochore, located in the center of each chromosome.
In this way, the spindle in a mitotic cell has two poles emanating microtubules. Microtubules are long proteic filaments with asymmetric extremes, a "minus"(-) end relatively stable next to the centrosome, and a "plus"(+) end enduring alternate phases of growing-shrinking, exploring the center of the cell.
Astral microtubules anchor the spindle poles to the cell membrane. Microtubule polymerization is nucleated at the microtubule organizing center . An aster is a cellular structure shaped like a star , consisting of a centrosome and its associated microtubules during the early stages of mitosis in an animal cell.
In the absence of the centrioles, the microtubules of the spindle are focused by motors, allowing the formation of a bipolar spindle. Many cells can completely undergo interphase without centrioles. [10] Unlike centrioles, centrosomes are required for survival of the organism. Cells without centrosomes lack radial arrays of astral microtubules ...
An array of microtubules can arrange themselves in a pinwheel structure to form the basal bodies, which can lead to the formation of microtubule arrays in the cytoplasm or the 9+2 axoneme. Other arrangements range from fungi spindle pole bodies to the eukaryotic chromosomal kinetochores (flat, laminated plaques). MTOCs can be freely dispersed ...
Animal cell cytokinesis starts with the stabilization of microtubules and reorganization of the mitotic spindle to form the central spindle. The central spindle (or spindle midzone ) forms when non-kinetochore microtubule fibers are bundled between the spindle poles.
Microtubules are assembled from dimers of α- and β-tubulin. These subunits are slightly acidic, with an isoelectric point between 5.2 and 5.8. [14] Each has a molecular weight of approximately 50 kDa. [15] To form microtubules, the dimers of α- and β-tubulin bind to GTP and assemble onto the (+) ends of microtubules while in the GTP-bound ...