Never let you go

Abstract

Abscission is the final step of cell division, typically occurring within 1–2 hours of furrow closure, although extended connections have been observed previously. In a recent report, Vasilev et al. show that in early mouse embryos, attachment between daughter cells are maintained much longer than in somatic cells, which allows cytoplasmic molecules to diffuse between them.

To determine how long the cytokinetic bridge was maintained after division, the authors injected photoactivatable GFP into one cell of a 4-cell stage developing mouse embryo and imaged the cells to 32-cell stage. Transfer occurs throughout interphase and ends once the microtubules maintaining the bridge disappear. Further analysis of early embryos identified a requirement of Aurora kinase to maintain these extensions, and the authors characterized the types of molecules that can be exchanged. Although these connections did not affect cell fate decisions, they did support the synchronous apoptosis of the linked cells by diffusion of apoptosis regulators.