@article{RedemannBaumgartLindowetal.2017, author = {Redemann, Stefanie and Baumgart, Johannes and Lindow, Norbert and Shelley, Michael and Nazockdast, Ehssan and Kratz, Andrea and Prohaska, Steffen and Brugu{\´e}s, Jan and F{\"u}rthauer, Sebastian and M{\"u}ller-Reichert, Thomas}, title = {C. elegans chromosomes connect to centrosomes by anchoring into the spindle network}, volume = {8}, journal = {Nature Communications}, number = {15288}, doi = {10.1038/ncomms15288}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The mitotic spindle ensures the faithful segregation of chromosomes. Here we combine the first large-scale serial electron tomography of whole mitotic spindles in early C. elegans embryos with live-cell imaging to reconstruct all microtubules in 3D and identify their plus- and minus-ends. We classify them as kinetochore (KMTs), spindle (SMTs) or astral microtubules (AMTs) according to their positions, and quantify distinct properties of each class. While our light microscopy and mutant studies show that microtubules are nucleated from the centrosomes, we find only a few KMTs directly connected to the centrosomes. Indeed, by quantitatively analysing several models of microtubule growth, we conclude that minus-ends of KMTs have selectively detached and depolymerized from the centrosome. In toto, our results show that the connection between centrosomes and chromosomes is mediated by an anchoring into the entire spindle network and that any direct connections through KMTs are few and likely very transient.}, language = {en} } @article{OkaforntaFarhadifarFabigetal.2025, author = {Okafornta, Chukwuebuka William and Farhadifar, Reza and Fabig, Gunar and Wu, Hai-Yin and K{\"o}ckert, Maria and Vogel, Martin and Baum, Daniel and Haase, Robert and Shelley, Michael J. and Needleman, Daniel J. and M{\"u}ller-Reichert, Thomas}, title = {Cell size reduction scales spindle elongation but not chromosome segregation in C. elegans}, journal = {bioRxiv}, doi = {10.1101/2025.10.13.681585}, year = {2025}, abstract = {How embryos adapt their internal cellular machinery to reductions in cell size during development remains a fundamental question in cell biology. Here, we use high-resolution lattice light-sheet fluorescence microscopy and automated image analysis to quantify lineage-resolved mitotic spindle and chromosome segregation dynamics from the 2- to 64-cell stages in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. While spindle length scales with cell size across both wild-type and size-perturbed embryos, chromosome segregation dynamics remain largely invariant, suggesting that distinct mechanisms govern these mitotic processes. Combining femtosecond laser ablation with large-scale electron tomography, we find that central spindle microtubules mediate chromosome segregation dynamics and remain uncoupled from cell size across all stages of early development. In contrast, spindle elongation is driven by cortically anchored motor proteins and astral microtubules, rendering it sensitive to cell size. Incorporating these experimental results into an extended stoichiometric model for both the spindle and chromosomes, we find that allowing only cell size and microtubule catastrophe rates to vary reproduces elongation dynamics across development. The same model also accounts for centrosome separation and pronuclear positioning in the one-cell C. elegans embryo, spindle-length scaling across nematode species spanning ~100 million years of divergence, and spindle rotation in human cells. Thus, a unified stoichiometric framework provides a predictive, mechanistic account of spindle and nuclear dynamics across scales and species.}, language = {en} }