Re: What happens to specific organelles during mitosis?+URLs & books 4 ref too?

Dear Shawn:

I am going to try to answer your question focusing on the Golgi complex, which has been extensively studied during mitosis.

As you must know, the Golgi is a highly dynamic structure that undergoes rapid dissassembly and reassembly, fuctioning at the crossroad of the membrane trafficking pathway. In mammalian cells, it breaks down prior to mitosis and reassembles in the daughter cells. The mechanisms underlying membrane fragmentation and dispersion during mitosis are still unclear. One of the models proposes a breakdown of Golgi membrane into smaller units by increased membrane budding and decreased fusion. Thus, the Golgi-derived vesicles will be dispersed throughout the cytoplasm and distributed among the daughter cells stochastically. An alternative model is based on the fact that trafficking to the Golgi FROM the Endoplasmic Reticulum is blocked and cytoplasmic microtubules are depolymerized as well. The conjuction of these two events would lead to alterations in Golgi structures.

Although the mechanism that causes Golgi disassembly are still under study, you can see the process in movies that follow Golgi dynamics in the following websites:

http://www.lif.icnet.uk/axp/cb/

http://www.embl-heidelberg.de/~jwhite/movies/GolgiDynamics/GolgiDynamics.html

I have also copied a figure from Lippincott-Schwartz and Zaal (Histochem Cell Biol (2000) 114:93—103) so that you can understand what you’ll be seeing in the movies from those sites. Unfortunately, since the dynamics of organelle rearrangement is still an open question, it’ll be hard to find textbooks adressing this issue. There are, however, some scientific articles that review this point:

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz · Kristien J.M. Zaal Cell cycle maintenance and biogenesis of the Golgi complex Histochem Cell Biol (2000) 114:93—103

Andreas Nebenführ, Jennifer A. Frohlick, and L. Andrew Staehelin Redistribution of Golgi Stacks and Other Organelles during Mitosis and Cytokinesis in Plant Cells. Plant Physiology, (2000) Vol. 124: 135—151

If you are interested in these papers and have no access to them, I’ll be more than happy to e-mail you the corresponding pdf files.