View the Current Issue

Article

  • The EMBO Journal (2008) 27, 2510 - 2522
  • doi:10.1038/emboj.2008.175

Published online: 4 September 2008

CENP-V is required for centromere organization, chromosome alignment and cytokinesisEMBO Open

Ana Mafalda Baptista Tadeu1,2, Susana Ribeiro1, Josiah Johnston3, Ilya Goldberg3, Dietlind Gerloff4 and William C Earnshaw1

  1. Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  2. Department of Biochemistry, PDBEB, Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
  3. Image Informatics and Computational Biology Unit, NIH, National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, MD, USA
  4. Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, Baskin School of Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Correspondence to:

William C Earnshaw, Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, The University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JR, UK. Tel.: +44 0131 650 7101; Fax: +44 0132 650 7100;
E-mail: bill.earnshaw@ed.ac.uk

Received 16 December 2007; Accepted 31 July 2008

The mechanism of mitotic chromosome condensation is poorly understood, but even less is known about the mechanism of formation of the primary constriction, or centromere. A proteomic analysis of mitotic chromosome scaffolds led to the identification of CENP-V, a novel kinetochore protein related to a bacterial enzyme that detoxifies formaldehyde, a by-product of histone demethylation in eukaryotic cells. Overexpression of CENP-V leads to hypercondensation of pericentromeric heterochromatin, a phenotype that is abolished by mutations in the putative catalytic site. CENP-V depletion in HeLa cells leads to abnormal expansion of the primary constriction of mitotic chromosomes, mislocalization and destabilization of the chromosomal passenger complex (CPC) and alterations in the distribution of H3K9me3 in interphase nucleoplasm. CENP-V-depleted cells suffer defects in chromosome alignment in metaphase, lagging chromosomes in anaphase, failure of cytokinesis and rapid cell death. CENP-V provides a novel link between centromeric chromatin, the primary constriction and the CPC.

  • Keywords:

    • chromosome passenger complex,
    • kinetochore,
    • mitosis,
    • pericentromeric heterochromatin,
    • primary constriction

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This license does not permit commercial exploitation without specific permission.

Top

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated

REVIEWS

Chromosomal passengers: conducting cell division

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology Review (01 Oct 2007)

See all 23 matches for Reviews

NEWS AND VIEWS

INCENP at the kinase crossroads

Nature Cell Biology News and Views (01 Feb 2006)

Borealin shines light on spindle dynamics

Nature Cell Biology News and Views (01 Aug 2004)

RESEARCH

Karyotyping human chromosomes by combinatorial multi-fluor FISH

Nature Genetics Article (01 Apr 1996)

Histone deacetylase inhibitors induce mitotic slippage

Oncogene Original Article

See all 60 matches for Research

The EMBO Journal is published by Nature Publishing Group on behalf of European Molecular Biology Organization