MadSci Network: Cell Biology |
You are right: being typical eukaryotes, they all have a process of mitosis. There are some neat minor variations among certain protists from the standard mitosis of the multi-cellular eukaryotes (actually, fungi also have a weird variation of mitosis...). For example, dinoflagellates never destroy their nuclear envelope during mitosis (they also have strange sausage shaped chromosomes, sometimes as many as 200 of them, which never "decondense"; even in interphase you can see these chromosomes inside the nucleus with an ordinary microscope.) This is how dinoflagellate mitosis happens: cytoplasmic "tunnels" which contain cytoplasmic microtubules burrow through the nucleus from one side to the other, and the chromosomes attach to the inner surface of the nuclear envelope surrounding these parallel tunnels. Then, the microtubules pull the chromosomes to opposite sides of the nucleus, which pinches in half. Weird, but the result of this "closed" mitosis is the same as typical "open" mitosis found in plant and animals cells. Cheers, and sorry for the wait, Dean Jacobson, dinoflagellate naturalist
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