Molecular motors are required for spindle assembly and maintenance during cell division. How motors move and interact inside spindles is unknown. Using photoactivation and photobleaching, we measure mitotic motor movement inside a dynamic spindle. We find that dynein-dynactin transports the essential motor Eg5 toward the spindle poles in Xenopus laevis egg extract spindles, revealing a direct i...

Dynein mediates spindle positioning in budding yeast by pulling on astral microtubules (MTs) from the cell cortex. The MT-associated protein She1 regulates dynein activity along astral MTs and directs spindle movements toward the bud cell. In addition to localizing to astral MTs, She1 also targets to the spindle, but its role on the spindle remains unknown. Using function-separating alleles, li...

background and objective: inflammatory pseudotumor  is a lesion composed of proliferating spindle cells with mixed inflammatory infiltrates. some authors have proposed the name inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor as a proper descriptive term rather than the vague inflammatory pseudotumor. the aim of this study was to verify the myofibroblastic origin of spindle cells in idiopathic orbital inflam...

Background: Fully grown mammalian oocyte utilizes transcripts synthetized and stored during earlier development. In the mouse oocyte there are three forms of cap-dependent translational repressors: 4E-BP1, 4E-BP2, and 4E-BP3. The dominant form, 4E-BP1, inhibits cap-dependent translation by binding to the eIF4E translation initiation factor. Hyperphosphorylation of 4E-BP1 disrupts this inhibitor...

We have used micromanipulation to study the attachment of chromosomes to the spindle and the mechanical properties of the chromosomal spindle fibers. Individual chromosomes can be displaced about the periphery of the spindle, in the plane of the metaphase plate, without altering the structure of the spindle or the positions of the nonmanipulated chromosomes. From mid-prometaphase through the on...

Background: The meiotic spindle plays an important role in the oocyte during chromosome alignment and separation at meiosis. The zona pellucid (ZP) is a dynamic matrix composed of filaments with the properties that might reflect the history of oocyte cytoplasmic maturation. Since, spindle and ZP in living oocytes are highly birefringent, their structures can be viewed noninvasively by using a P...

OBJECTIVE Sleep spindles (12-15 Hz oscillations) are one of the hallmarks of the electroencephalogram (EEG) during human non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep. The effect of a 40 h sleep deprivation (SD) on spindle characteristics along the antero-posterior axis was investigated. METHODS EEGs during non-REM sleep in healthy young volunteers were analyzed with a new method for instantaneous s...