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Drosophila centrosomes are unable to trigger parthenogenetic development of Xenopus eggs
Author(s) -
Tournier Frédéric,
Bobinnec Yves,
Debec Alain,
Santamaria Pedro,
Bornens Michel
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
biology of the cell
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.543
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1768-322X
pISSN - 0248-4900
DOI - 10.1016/s0248-4900(99)80034-3
Subject(s) - centrosome , biology , centriole , xenopus , microbiology and biotechnology , parthenogenesis , centrosome cycle , microtubule , cytoplasm , microtubule organizing center , genetics , embryo , cell , cell cycle , gene
Centrosomes are powerful and exclusive parthenogenetic agents in the Xenopus egg. We have previously shown that heterologous centrosomes from various vertebrate species were able to promote egg cleavage in Xenopus and that human centrosome activity was associated with an insoluble proteinacious structure that is not significantly simpler than the native centrosome. In this work, we have investigated the parthenogenetic capacity of more evolutionary distant centrosomes. We show that centrosomes devoid of centrioles, such as SPBs isolated from Saccharomyces cerevisiae , do not form asters of microtubules in cytoplasmic extracts from Xenopus eggs, and are inactive in the parthenogenetic test. We further show that Drosophila centrosomes which possess a typical centriole architecture, and are quite active to nucleate microtubules in Xenopus cytoplasmic extracts, are unable to trigger egg cleavage. This was observed both with centrosomes isolated from Drosophila syncytial embryos and nucleus‐centrosome complexes from the Drosophila Kc23 cell line. We demonstrate that this inability could not be restored after pre‐incubation of Drosophila centrosomes in the egg cytoplasm before injection. We conclude that the parthenogenetic activity of a centrosome is not directly linked to its capacity to nucleate microtubules from the egg tubulin, and that the evolutionary conserved nine‐fold symmetrical structure of the centriole cannot be considered as sufficient for triggering procentriole assembly.