In this issue, three groups (Hewitt et al. 2010. J. Cell Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.201002133; Maciejowski et al. 2010. J. Cell Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.201001050; Santaguida et al. 2010. J. Cell Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.201001036) use chemical inhibitors to analyze the function of the mitotic checkpoint kinase Mps1. These studies demonstrate that Mps1 kinase activity ensures accurate chromosome segregati...

Through the use of live confocal imaging, electron microscopy, and the novel cell biological platform of cultured Aplysia neurons we show that unfolding of the hallmark cell pathologies induced by mutant-human-tau (mt-human-tau) expression is rescued by 10 nM paclitaxel. At this concentration paclitaxel prevents mt-human-tau-induced swelling of axonal segments, translocation of tau and microtub...

The objective of this investigation was to study the effects of maytansine on the cell cycle kinetics of HeLa cells. The results of this study indicate that maytansine is a very potent mitotic inhibitor and that it has no effect on macromolecular synthesis. Maytansine-induced cytotoxicity was dependent upon the p0sition of the cell in the cell cycle. Mitotic and G2cells are most sensitive to th...

Endotoxin was demonstrated not to act as an adjuvant in the primary antibody response in the Syrian hamster. Minimal adjuvant action was demonstrable in antibody formation to a second injection of bovine gamma globulin. The immunological status of the hamster towards the endotoxin did not alter this weak adjuvant action. It was confirmed that the antimitotic drug colchicine will act as an adjuv...

In order to verify the hypothesis that intestinal cell proliferation is controlled by a mitotic inhibitor, extracts of villous epithelial cells from different species were analysed to study their effect on the proliferation of various intestinal cells. Villous extracts from rat and rabbit strongly and reversibly inhibited cell division and DNA synthesis in a rat intestinal epithelial cell line ...

BACKGROUND S. cerevisiae cells must grow to a critical size in G1 in order to pass start and enter the cell cycle. A recent study proposed that in addition to the mother size control in G1, the bud must grow to a critical bud size in G2 in order to enter mitosis. Insufficient bud size would cause G2 arrest enforced by the mitotic inhibitor Swe1p, explaining previous findings that some perturbat...

A new family of diphenylethanes has been synthesized as conformationally restricted analogues of antimitotic combretastatins. The two phenyl rings are linked between the para-phenolic positions through a 3-oxapentamethylene or hexamethylene chain. The key macrocyclization step was achieved in moderate yields by using an intramolecular McMurry pinacol coupling of linked aromatic dialdehydes, exc...

Mitotic inhibitors (colcemid, colchicine, and vinblastine) initiate DNA synthesis in dense stationary cultures of mouse embryo fibroblast-like cells. This initiation is not due to any changes in local cell population density. Relationships between the activation of proliferation and other changes of interphase fibroblast-like cells produced by the mitotic inhibitors (disappearance of cytoplasmi...

A case of a squamous cell carcinoma of the conjunctiva is presented. The lesion was removed with recurrence in another conjunctival site. The patient received cycles of 5-Fluorouracil as adjuvant treatment to the surgical removal and presented unfavorable evolution, requiring orbital exenteration. Comments are made on the use of antimitotic drugs in the management of these lesions.

Drugs targeting the mitotic spindle are used extensively during chemotherapy, but surprisingly, little is known about how they kill tumor cells. This is largely because many of the population-based approaches are indirect and lead to vague and confusing interpretations. Here, we use a high-throughput automated time-lapse light microscopy approach to systematically analyze over 10,000 single cel...