Figures
Centromere assembly in Drosophila cells.
A cell in the metaphase stage of mitosis is showing recruitment of the centromere-specific protein CID (red) to centromeres (green, alpha-tubulin; blue, DNA). Centromeres are essential chromosomal structures that mediate accurate chromosome segregation during cell division. To ensure faithful inheritance of the centromere locus through cell division, cells must recruit new centromere-binding proteins that would be otherwise diluted at each round of DNA replication. A study from Mellone et al. tracks the cell-cycle timing of centromere assembly in Drosophila melanogaster cells and reports that this organism has evolved a distinct strategy to accomplish this fundamental process.
Image Credit: Barbara Mellone and Kathryn Grive (Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut)
Citation: (2011) PLoS Genetics Issue Image | Vol. 7(5) May 2011. PLoS Genet 7(5): ev07.i05. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pgen.v07.i05
Published: May 26, 2011
Copyright: © 2011 Mellone and Grive. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
A cell in the metaphase stage of mitosis is showing recruitment of the centromere-specific protein CID (red) to centromeres (green, alpha-tubulin; blue, DNA). Centromeres are essential chromosomal structures that mediate accurate chromosome segregation during cell division. To ensure faithful inheritance of the centromere locus through cell division, cells must recruit new centromere-binding proteins that would be otherwise diluted at each round of DNA replication. A study from Mellone et al. tracks the cell-cycle timing of centromere assembly in Drosophila melanogaster cells and reports that this organism has evolved a distinct strategy to accomplish this fundamental process.
Image Credit: Barbara Mellone and Kathryn Grive (Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut)