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CELL BIOPHYSICS

Stars take centre stage

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 778–779 (2018)Cite this article

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Magnetic tweezer measurements have revealed the forces associated with a star-shaped structure responsible for moving the sperm nucleus to the centre of the egg cell following fertilization.

During fertilization, after the union of sperm and egg, the male and female nuclei meet and fuse to form the zygote, also known as the one-cell embryo. But egg cells are large — those of humans and sea urchins have diameters of around 100 μm, and frog eggs can measure up to 1 mm. This makes for an arduous migratory journey to the cell centre, as the nuclei themselves are no more than 10 μm. To meet this challenge, the nuclei make use of a star-shaped aster of microtubules growing out of a structure called the centrosome. The importance of this aster has long been recognized1, and yet the mechanics of nuclear migration remains poorly understood. Now, writing in Nature Physics, Hirokazu Tanimoto and co-workers2 have measured the force associated with the migration and centring of the microtubule aster in large cells (~90 μm) — providing the first estimate of the number of motor proteins involved in the process, and offering insight into the mechanism by which the motor forces are transmitted to the aster.

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Fig. 1: Probing nuclear mechanics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shriram Center for Chemical Engineering & Bioengineering at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Carlos Garzon-Coral

  2. Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jonathon Howard

Authors
  1. Carlos Garzon-Coral
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  2. Jonathon Howard
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Correspondence to Carlos Garzon-Coral or Jonathon Howard.

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Garzon-Coral, C., Howard, J. Stars take centre stage. Nature Phys 14, 778–779 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0164-2

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