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Cell cycle

A snip separates sisters

Nature volume 400, pages 19–21 (1999)Cite this article

This chromosomal dance depends on the physical linkage between the two sisters, which allows them to align correctly, but must then be dissolved so they can separate at the end of mitosis. Logic suggests that the linkage must be established during DNA replication and then persist until mitosis; the sisters are uniquely close to each other during the act of replication, making it easy to link one sister to another rather than to a non-sister. If the sisters were not linked during replication, this spatial distinction would rapidly disappear as they diffused apart from each other.

Looking at extreme cases reveals that the stability of sister linkage can vary over seven orders of magnitude. In a human oocyte, for example, the sisters must remain linked to each other from the end of DNA replication until the oocyte enters the meiotic divisions that will transform it into an unfertilized egg — an interval that can exceed 50 years. Failure of this linkage is an important cause of Down's syndrome. By contrast, during early divisions of the fruitfly embryo, the chromosomes must receive the signal to separate and dissolve their linkage in less than two minutes.

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Figure 1: Chromosomal events during cell division.

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  1. the Department of Physiology, University of California, 513 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, 94143-0444, California, USA

    Andrew Murray

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Murray, A. A snip separates sisters. Nature 400, 19–21 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/21781

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