spindle
Sign in to saveAlso known as spindle apparatus, GO:0005819
array of microtubules and associated molecules that forms between opposite poles of a eukaryotic cell during mitosis or meiosis and serves to move the duplicated chromosomes apart
Research
63,747 papers- Spindle-dependent memory consolidation in healthy adults: A meta-analysis.Neuropsychologia · 2023
- Updates in spindle cell/pleomorphic lipomas.Seminars in diagnostic pathology · 2019
- Microtubule choreography: spindle self-organization during cell division.Biophysical reviews · 2024
- Sleep spindle abnormalities related to Alzheimer's disease: a systematic mini-review.Sleep medicine · 2020
- Human Spindle Variability.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022
via PubMed
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Micrograph showing condensed chromosomes in blue, kinetochores in pink, and microtubules in green during metaphase of mitosis
In cell biology, the spindle apparatus is the cytoskeletal structure of eukaryotic cells that forms during cell division to separate sister chromatids between daughter cells. It is referred to as the mitotic spindle during mitosis, a process that produces genetically identical daughter cells, or the meiotic spindle during meiosis, a process that produces gametes with half the number of chromosomes of the parent cell.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “spindle” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.