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Tumor Cell Dividing

Quicktime Movie. Living tumor cell undergoing abnormal mitosis (credits: A. Jurczyk, G. Pihan, S. Doxsey, unpublished) A prostate tumor cell line (CPTX) permanently expressing histone 2B (a chromatin binding protein) coupled to green fluorescent protein. The fluorescent protein binds to chromatin allowing visualization of chromosome movements in living cells. Two defects in chromosome segregation can be seen in this movie. First, chromosomes segregate into 3 daughter cells rather than two as typically seen in normal cells. This is due to the presence of 3 spindle poles organized by three centrosomes (not shown). The second defect is that chromosomes remain attached by thin interconnections (seen in many frames) and at the final stages of cell division a chromosome breaks generating a small chromatin fragment (frame 11) that remains in the cytoplasm and is not included in the newly formed nuclei. Download the original Movie (27Mb)

Figure 1. Four images taken from movie. (frames 1, 4, 10, 11).(Credits: A. Jurczyk, G. Pihan, S. Doxsey, unpublished) Frame 4 shows chromosomes being missegregated into 3 cell progeny. Frames 10 and 11 show fragmentation or loss of chromosome(s).