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The spindle apparatus is vaguely ellipsoid in cross section and tapers at the ends. In the wide middle portion, known as the spindle midzone, antiparallel microtubules are bundled by kinesins. At the pointed ends, known as spindle poles, microtubules are nucleated by the centrosomes in most animal cells.
The spindle pole body (SPB) is the microtubule organizing center in yeast cells, functionally equivalent to the centrosome. Unlike the centrosome the SPB does not contain centrioles. The SPB organises the microtubule cytoskeleton which plays many roles in the cell. It is important for organising the spindle and thus in cell division.
Astral microtubules anchor the spindle poles to the cell membrane. Microtubule polymerization is nucleated at the microtubule organizing center. An aster is a cellular structure shaped like a star, consisting of a centrosome and its associated microtubules during the early stages of mitosis in an animal cell.
During the prophase in the process of cell division called mitosis, the centrosomes migrate to opposite poles of the cell. The mitotic spindle then forms between the two centrosomes. Upon division, each daughter cell receives one centrosome. Aberrant numbers of centrosomes in a cell have been associated with cancer.
Plant cells lack centrioles or spindle pole bodies except in their flagellate male gametes, and they are entirely absent in the conifers and flowering plants. [4] Instead, the nuclear envelope itself appears to function as the main MTOC for microtubule nucleation and spindle organization during plant cell mitosis.
Spindle disassembly is an irreversible process which must effect not the ultimate degradation, but the reorganization of constituent microtubules; microtubules are detached from kinetochores and spindle pole bodies and return to their interphase states.
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Since the centrosome organizes the microtubules of a cell, it has to do with the formation of the mitotic spindle, polarity and, therefore, cell shape, as well as all other processes having to do with the mitotic spindle. [2] The centriole is the inner core of the centrosome, and its conformation is typically somewhat like that of spokes on a ...