Report |
Correspondence to David T. Miyamoto: miyamoto@post.harvard.edu
Abstract
Although mitotic and meiotic spindles maintain a steady-state length during metaphase, their antiparallel microtubules slide toward spindle poles at a constant rate. This "poleward flux" of microtubules occurs in many organisms and may provide part of the force for chromosome segregation. We use quantitative image analysis to examine the role of the kinesin Eg5 in poleward flux in metaphase Xenopus laevis egg extract spindles. Pharmacological inhibition of Eg5 results in a doseresponsive slowing of flux, and biochemical depletion of Eg5 significantly decreases the flux rate. Our results suggest that ensembles of nonprocessive Eg5 motors drive flux in metaphase Xenopus extract spindles.
Introduction
The metaphase spindle is a dynamic structure, balancing continuous antiparallel microtubule sliding, net microtubule polymerization near the midzone, and net depolymerization near the poles (Mitchison, 1989; Sawin and Mitchison, 1991; Brust-Mascher and Scholey, 2002; Maddox et al., 2002). This poleward microtubule flux may provide part of the force for anaphase chromosome movement (Mitchison and Salmon, 1992; Desai et al., 1998; Brust-Mascher and Scholey, 2002; Maddox et al., 2003; Rogers et al., 2004), but its molecular basis is poorly understood. Addition of the nonhydrolyzable ATP analogue AMPPNP stops flux, which could be due to specific inhibition of motors or to a more global perturbation (Sawin and Mitchison, 1991). Recent work has identified a Kin I kinesin as a depolymerization factor involved in flux (Rogers et al., 2004), but it remains unknown whether microtubule depolymerization at the poles drives flux or works in concert with microtubule sliding driven by some other mechanism.
Eg5 is a member of the BimC family of plus enddirected kinesins, which play an important role in the establishment and maintenance of spindle bipolarity (Enos and Morris, 1990; Hagan and Yanagida, 1992; Sawin et al., 1992). Its directionality and gliding rate make Eg5 an attractive candidate for providing the sliding force for flux. Consistent with this hypothesis, Eg5 is a bipolar tetramer in solution and may be capable of sliding apart antiparallel microtubules (Kashina et al., 1996). Specific small molecule inhibitors of Eg5 have been discovered (Mayer et al., 1999; Finer et al., 2001; Hotha et al., 2003) and used to study its role in spindle bipolarity (Kapoor et al., 2000). Preliminary data using a single moderate dose of monastrol did not reveal a role for Eg5 in flux (Kapoor and Mitchison, 2001), but the variability of flux rates in Xenopus laevis extract spindles may have hindered the detection of moderate changes in flux rate using standard image analysis techniques. Here, we use a new quantitative analysis technique to enable the rapid, accurate measurement of flux in large numbers of spindles treated with several different Eg5 inhibitors or biochemically depleted of Eg5.
Results and discussion
We used time-lapse fluorescent speckle microscopy (FSM; Waterman-Storer et al., 1998) to visualize the poleward movement of microtubules in metaphase spindles assembled in cell-free Xenopus egg extracts (Desai et al., 1999; Video 1, available at http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/jcb.200407126/DC1). We first estimated flux velocities in the presence of Eg5 inhibitors by kymography (Waterman-Storer et al., 1998), in which intensities of speckles along a line in an image are used to generate a distance versus time plot from a time-lapse movie (Fig. 1, A and B). To maintain spindle bipolarity, we relied on the resistance of spindles to collapse in standard coverslip squashes prepared immediately after drug addition (Kapoor and Mitchison, 2001).
|
We developed an automated method based on cross-correlation (Westerweel, 1997) to enable the rapid measurement of average whole spindle flux rates in large numbers of spindles. In brief, if a group of speckles in a spindle move poleward at similar velocities, their positions relative to each other will not vary over short times. The cross-correlation algorithm uses this persistent pattern to find the change in position of a group of speckles over some time interval. In a bipolar spindle with antiparallel microtubules sliding poleward, two populations of speckles move away from each other. This results in two cross-correlation maxima, and the distance between these reports on the average flux rate (Fig. 2 A and see Materials and methods). The average flux rates measured by cross-correlation and estimated from kymography were similar in a wide range of control and Eg5-inhibited spindles (Fig. 1, B and C, E and F, and H and I; and Fig. 2, B and C). This fast ensemble-based method samples a larger data set from each spindle than manual kymography and can analyze short movies to calculate speckle velocities (20 s for control spindles and 90 s for slowed spindles), whereas visual kymograph analysis generally requires significantly longer movies. Thus, we were able to considerably increase the number of spindles and perturbation conditions we could sample and accurately measure in each experiment.
|
|
|
|
The simple hyperbolic doseresponse curve we observed suggests that the speed of microtubule sliding is proportional to the concentration of active motor. If the flux rate is limited not by load but rather by the maximal velocity of Eg5 motors, as suggested by the similarity of flux rates and in vitro gliding rates (Sawin et al., 1992; Kapoor and Mitchison, 2001), then such a proportional relationship may suggest that Eg5 in the spindle behaves as a nonprocessive motor, because processivity would yield a nonlinear relationship between motor density and gliding velocity (Howard, 2001). Consistent with this hypothesis, Eg5 appears to be nonprocessive in vitro (Crevel et al., 1997). Flux in extract spindles may thus be driven by ensembles of Eg5 acting nonprocessively, and the variability of flux rates between extract spindles might reflect differing amounts of Eg5.
Eg5 is likely to act on antiparallel microtubules, and therefore on overlapping interpolar microtubules. Flux rates vary among different animal cells, possibly reflecting differing ratios of interpolar microtubules to kinetochore fibers. Most of the microtubules in Xenopus extract spindles appear to be of the overlap class, and these spindles may therefore be dominated by Eg5-driven flux. Consistent with an essential role for antiparallel overlap in this system, we have recently used FSM to show that monopolar CSF extract spindles do not flux and that the onset of flux correlates with the onset of bipolar organization (Mitchison et al., 2004). In contrast, kinetochore fibers, which have uniform microtubule polarity, may flux by different mechanisms. For example, detached and isolated kinetochore fibers in grasshopper spermatocyte spindles flux in the apparent absence of antiparallel neighbors (Chen and Zhang, 2004). The mechanistic differences between parallel and antiparallel microtubules are highlighted by measurements indicating that kinetochore fibers flux slower than overlap microtubules (Waterman-Storer et al., 1998; Maddox et al., 2003). A better understanding of the behaviors of microtubule subpopulations in spindles will require extensive comparative FSM studies using nonaveraging measurement techniques (Vallotton et al., 2003). The techniques we introduce in this paper may be useful for addressing the role of Eg5 in flux in other organisms as well as in anaphase in Xenopus extract spindles.
Early models suggested that poleward microtubule flux occurs by a treadmilling mechanism in which sliding is driven by differences in tubulin subunit affinity at opposite ends of the microtubule (Margolis et al., 1978). Our data demonstrate that Eg5 activity is required for flux in Xenopus extract spindles and suggests a model in which ensembles of Eg5 drive sliding by exerting force between antiparallel microtubules. This sliding may be coupled to plus end dynamic instability and depolymerization at poles by the action of Kin I kinesins (Rogers et al., 2004), accounting for poleward microtubule flux. The role of flux in chromosome movement and spindle assembly are open questions that can be addressed now that the sliding motor has been identified.
Materials and methods
Spindle assembly and FSM
We prepared Xenopus egg extracts as described and spindles were assembled after one cycle of DNA replication (Desai et al., 1999). We performed FSM as described using X-rhodaminelabeled tubulin (Waterman-Storer et al., 1998). Images were acquired at 20°C on a microscope (model E800; Nikon) with 60x or 100x objective (1.4 NA Plan Apo DIC; Nikon), immersion oil (Deltavision), and cooled CCD camera (MicroMax; Princeton Instruments) using Metamorph Imaging software (Universal Imaging Corp.). 4 µl of spindle reactions were squashed under 18 x 18-mm coverslips and imaged by wide field microscopy with the focal plane in the middle of each spindle. We typically acquired movies of 46 spindles per coverslip, 18 frames each, 5-s intervals, and 400 ms exposure. In some cases, 23 movies of 25 to 40 frames at 5-s intervals were acquired. We saw no correlation between flux rate and extract age or time spent under glass.
Inhibitor studies
Monastrol (Mayer et al., 1999) and (S)- and (R)-quinazolinone (Fig. S1; Finer et al., 2001) were prepared as described previously (gift from Z. Maliga, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA). HR22C16-A2 was a gift from T. Kapoor (Rockefeller University, New York, NY). We prepared 100x DMSO stocks of each dilution for each compound. For trapped spindle studies, we added 0.5 µl of compound stock to 50 µl of preassembled spindles before rapid squash preparation. For p50 spindles, we added 0.71 mg/ml p50/dynamitin (Wittmann and Hyman, 1999) at the time of CSF addback (Desai et al., 1999) or after spindle assembly. Compounds were added to p50 spindle reactions and incubated at least 30 min before squash preparation. Untreated controls were prepared periodically to detect any gross variation in flux rate over time. For spindle collapse studies, we added compounds to preassembled spindles and incubated for 30 min before taking fixed squashes. We counted >100 spindles per treatment and calculated percent bipolarity.
Immunodepletion studies
Rabbit polyclonal antibodies were affinity purified against Eg5 tail construct GT-Eg5T (Sawin et al., 1992) after depletion of anti-GST antibody. Immunodepletions were done with Dynabeads (Dynal) as described previously (Desai et al., 1999), with three successive rounds needed to render Eg5 undetectable. p50/dynamitin (Wittmann and Hyman, 1999) was added at the time of CSF addback. Full-length recombinant 6-Histagged Xenopus Eg5 was purified from SF9 cells as described previously, confirmed functional in gliding assays (Kapoor and Mitchison, 2001), and flash-frozen. Freeze-thawed Eg5 appeared partially aggregated by analytical gel filtration, but rescued spindle bipolarity in Eg5-depleted extracts. Recombinant Eg5 was added to Eg5-depleted extracts on ice before spindle assembly after clarifying for 15 min at 20,800 g at 4°C. Eg5 concentrations were measured in depleted extracts by quantitative Western blots using an Odyssey Infrared Imaging System (LI-COR Biosciences).
Kymograph and cross-correlation analysis
For kymographs, movies were often aligned using a cross-correlationbased image registration algorithm (Mitchison et al., 2004), but in all cases rotated by cubic interpolation to the horizontal axis to avoid dilation of pixels in the resultant kymograph (Metamorph Imaging software; Universal Imaging Corp.). Kymographs were prepared after applying an unsharp mask filter as described previously (Waterman-Storer et al., 1998). Flux rates were calculated from slopes of speckle trajectories.
Cross-correlation measurement of average speckle velocity with sub-pixel precision used a strategy similar to particle image velocimetry techniques (Westerweel, 1997). We wrote analysis software in Matlab (Mathworks); code and documentation is available at http://mitchison. med.harvard.edu. Each movie was cropped to the edges of the spindle and bandpass filtered to remove shot noise and large overall variations in image intensity. We manually determined a relevant time interval i and computed the cross-correlation for all possible (t, t + i) pairs by conjugate multiplication in the Fourier domain. We generally saw two peaks, reflecting speckle movement toward opposite poles. For control spindles, we used intervals of three, four, and five frames (15, 20, and 25 s). For spindles with slower flux rates, we used intervals up to 17 frames (85 s) to maintain separation of cross-correlation peaks. For each interval, all frame-pair cross-correlations were averaged. We found the line of highest integrated value using a Radon transform and fit the resulting profile as a sum of two Gaussians. The distance between centers of the Gaussians reflects the difference in displacement of the two speckle ensembles. Dividing by the time interval yields twice the flux rate. Rates were checked for consistency across the three to five best pair intervals.
Flux rates calculated by cross-correlation were consistent with average flux rates obtained by manual kymograph analysis (Figs. 1 and 2). The analysis was further validated using simulated data. Random distributions of "fluorophores" were individually moved at each step in a time series according to velocities drawn from a normal distribution, and simulated images were generated for each time by convolving the fluorophore distribution with a point-spread function. See Video 4 (available at http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/jcb.200407126/DC1) for a sample simulated movie. Analysis of these simulations suggests that cross-correlation can resolve velocities with a lower bound of 0.2 µm/min, assuming a microtubule turnover rate of 6090 s. For doseresponse analysis, a flux rate of zero was assigned to all spindles for which rates were not resolvable.
Online supplemental material
Chemical structures of Eg5 inhibitors, flux doseresponse data for monastrol, and kymographs from Eg5 depletion-addback experiments are provided. Three movies corresponding to Fig. 1 and one movie showing a sample simulated speckle time-lapse sequence are also included. Online supplemental material is available at http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/jcb.200407126/DC1.
Acknowledgments
We thank E.D. Salmon, T. Kapoor, and the Marine Biological Laboratory Cell Division Group for inspiring this project and useful discussions. We thank T. Kapoor for HR22C16-A2 and GT-Eg5T DNA construct, C. Walczak for helpful discussions on antibody production, and Z. Maliga for Eg5 inhibitors. We thank W. Brieher, G. Charras, R. Ward, M. Shirasu-Hiza, A. Vrabioiu, and Z. Maliga for critical reading of the manuscript.
This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health to T.J. Mitchison. D.T. Miyamoto and Z.E. Perlman are Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellows, and A.C. Groen is a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.
Submitted: 19 July 2004
Accepted: 29 September 2004
Brust-Mascher, I., and J.M. Scholey. 2002. Microtubule flux and sliding in mitotic spindles of Drosophila embryos. Mol. Biol. Cell. 13:39673975.
Chen, W., and D. Zhang. 2004. Kinetochore fibre dynamics outside the context of the spindle during anaphase. Nat. Cell Biol. 6:227231.[Medline]
Crevel, I.M., A. Lockhart, and R.A. Cross. 1997. Kinetic evidence for low chemical processivity in ncd and Eg5. J. Mol. Biol. 273:160170.[CrossRef][Medline]
Crevel, I.M., M.C. Alonso, and R.A. Cross. 2004. Monastrol stabilises an attached low-friction mode of Eg5. Curr. Biol. 14:R411R412.[CrossRef][Medline]
Desai, A., P.S. Maddox, T.J. Mitchison, and E.D. Salmon. 1998. Anaphase A chromosome movement and poleward spindle microtubule flux occur at similar rates in Xenopus extract spindles. J. Cell Biol. 141:703713.
Desai, A., A. Murray, T.J. Mitchison, and C.E. Walczak. 1999. The use of Xenopus egg extracts to study mitotic spindle assembly and function in vitro. Methods Cell Biol. 61:385412.[Medline]
Enos, A.P., and N.R. Morris. 1990. Mutation of a gene that encodes a kinesin-like protein blocks nuclear division in A. nidulans. Cell. 60:10191027.[Medline]
Finer, J.T., G. Bergnes, B. Feng, W.W. Smith, and J.C. Chabala. 2001. Methods and compositions using quinazolinones. In World Intellectual Property Organization. Vol. WO 01/30768 A. http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/ (accessed July 19, 2004.
Hagan, I., and M. Yanagida. 1992. Kinesin-related cut7 protein associates with mitotic and meiotic spindles in fission yeast. Nature. 356:7476.[CrossRef][Medline]
Hotha, S., J.C. Yarrow, J.G. Yang, S. Garrett, K.V. Renduchintala, T.U. Mayer, and T.M. Kapoor. 2003. HR22C16: a potent small-molecule probe for the dynamics of cell division. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 42:23792382.[CrossRef][Medline]
Howard, J. 2001. Speeds of motors. In Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, MA. 213227.
Kapoor, T.M., and T.J. Mitchison. 2001. Eg5 is static in bipolar spindles relative to tubulin: evidence for a static spindle matrix. J. Cell Biol. 154:11251133.
Kapoor, T.M., T.U. Mayer, M.L. Coughlin, and T.J. Mitchison. 2000. Probing spindle assembly mechanisms with monastrol, a small molecule inhibitor of the mitotic kinesin, Eg5. J. Cell Biol. 150:975988.
Kashina, A.S., R.J. Baskin, D.G. Cole, K.P. Wedaman, W.M. Saxton, and J.M. Scholey. 1996. A bipolar kinesin. Nature. 379:270272.[CrossRef][Medline]
Maddox, P., A. Desai, K. Oegema, T.J. Mitchison, and E.D. Salmon. 2002. Poleward microtubule flux is a major component of spindle dynamics and anaphase a in mitotic Drosophila embryos. Curr. Biol. 12:16701674.[CrossRef][Medline]
Maddox, P., A. Straight, P. Coughlin, T.J. Mitchison, and E.D. Salmon. 2003. Direct observation of microtubule dynamics at kinetochores in Xenopus extract spindles: implications for spindle mechanics. J. Cell Biol. 162:377382.
Margolis, R.L., L. Wilson, and B.I. Keifer. 1978. Mitotic mechanism based on intrinsic microtubule behaviour. Nature. 272:450452.[Medline]
Mayer, T.U., T.M. Kapoor, S.J. Haggarty, R.W. King, S.L. Schreiber, and T.J. Mitchison. 1999. Small molecule inhibitor of mitotic spindle bipolarity identified in a phenotype-based screen. Science. 286:971974.
Mitchison, T.J. 1989. Polewards microtubule flux in the mitotic spindle: evidence from photoactivation of fluorescence. J. Cell Biol. 109:637652.[Abstract]
Mitchison, T.J., and E.D. Salmon. 1992. Poleward kinetochore fiber movement occurs during both metaphase and anaphase-A in newt lung cell mitosis. J. Cell Biol. 119:569582.[Abstract]
Mitchison, T.J., P. Maddox, A. Groen, L. Cameron, Z. Perlman, R. Ohi, A. Desai, E.D. Salmon, and T.M. Kapoor. 2004. Bipolarization and poleward flux correlate during Xenopus extract spindle assembly. Mol. Biol. Cell. doi:10.1091/mbc.E04-05-0440.
Rogers, G.C., S.L. Rogers, T.A. Schwimmer, S.C. Ems-McClung, C.E. Walczak, R.D. Vale, J.M. Scholey, and D.J. Sharp. 2004. Two mitotic kinesins cooperate to drive sister chromatid separation during anaphase. Nature. 427:364370.[CrossRef][Medline]
Sawin, K.E., and T.J. Mitchison. 1991. Poleward microtubule flux mitotic spindles assembled in vitro. J. Cell Biol. 112:941954.[Abstract]
Sawin, K.E., and T.J. Mitchison. 1994. Microtubule flux in mitosis is independent of chromosomes, centrosomes, and antiparallel microtubules. Mol. Biol. Cell. 5:217226.[Abstract]
Sawin, K.E., K. LeGuellec, M. Philippe, and T.J. Mitchison. 1992. Mitotic spindle organization by a plus-end-directed microtubule motor. Nature. 359:540543.[CrossRef][Medline]
Shirasu-Hiza, M., Z.E. Perlman, T. Wittmann, E. Karsenti, and T.J. Mitchison. 2004. Eg5 causes elongation of meiotic spindles when flux-associated microtubule depolymerization is blocked. Curr. Biol. 14:19411945.[CrossRef][Medline]
Vallotton, P., A. Ponti, C.M. Waterman-Storer, E.D. Salmon, and G. Danuser. 2003. Recovery, visualization, and analysis of actin and tubulin polymer flow in live cells: a fluorescent speckle microscopy study. Biophys. J. 85:12891306.
Waterman-Storer, C.M., A. Desai, J.C. Bulinski, and E.D. Salmon. 1998. Fluorescent speckle microscopy, a method to visualize the dynamics of protein assemblies in living cells. Curr. Biol. 8:12271230.[Medline]
Westerweel, J. 1997. Fundamentals of digital particle image velocimetry. Meas. Sci. Technol. 8:13791392.[CrossRef]
Wittmann, T., and T. Hyman. 1999. Recombinant p50/dynamitin as a tool to examine the role of dynactin in intracellular processes. Methods Cell Biol. 61:137143.[Medline]