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J. Cell Biol.,
Volume 141, Number 5, June 1, 1998 1181-1191


* Biology Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3280; and A single unattached kinetochore can delay
anaphase onset in mitotic tissue culture cells (Rieder,
C.L., A. Schultz, R. Cole, G. Sluder. 1994. J. Cell Biol.
127:1301-1310). Kinetochores in vertebrate cells contain multiple binding sites, and tension is generated at
kinetochores after attachment to the plus ends of spindle microtubules. Checkpoint component Mad2 localizes selectively to unattached kinetochores (Chen, R.-H.,
J.C. Waters, E.D. Salmon, and A.W. Murray. 1996. Science. 274:242-246; Li, Y., and R. Benezra. Science. 274:
246-248) and disappears from kinetochores by late metaphase, when chromosomes are properly attached
to the spindle. Here we show that Mad2 is lost from
PtK1 cell kinetochores as they accumulate microtubules
and re-binds previously attached kinetochores after microtubules are depolymerized with nocodazole. We
also show that when kinetochore microtubules in
metaphase cells are stabilized with taxol, tension at kinetochores is lost. The phosphoepitope 3f3/2, which has
been shown to become dephosphorylated in response
to tension at the kinetochore (Nicklas, R.B., S.C. Ward,
and G.J. Gorbsky. 1995. J. Cell Biol. 130:929-939), is
phosphorylated on all 22 kinetochores after tension is
reduced with taxol. In contrast, Mad2 only localized to an
average of 2.6 out of the 22 kinetochores in taxol-treated
PtK1 cells. Therefore, loss of tension at kinetochores
occupied by microtubules is insufficient to induce Mad2
to accumulate on kinetochores, whereas unattached kinetochores consistently bind Mad2. We also found that
microinjecting antibodies against Mad2 caused cells arrested with taxol to exit mitosis after ~12 min, while
uninjected cells remained in mitosis for at least 6 h,
demonstrating that Mad2 is necessary for maintenance of the taxol-induced mitotic arrest. We conclude that
kinetochore microtubule attachment stops the Mad2
interactions at kinetochores which are important for inhibiting anaphase onset.
Physiology Department,
University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-0444
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