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A guide to classifying mitotic stages and mitotic defects in fixed cells

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Abstract

Cell division is fundamental to life and its perturbation can disrupt organismal development, alter tissue homeostasis, and cause disease. Analysis of mitotic abnormalities provides insight into how certain perturbations affect the fidelity of cell division and how specific cellular structures, molecules, and enzymatic activities contribute to the accuracy of this process. However, accurate classification of mitotic defects is instrumental for correct interpretation of data and formulation of new hypotheses. In this article, we provide guidelines for identifying specific mitotic stages and for classifying normal and deviant mitotic phenotypes. We hope this will clarify confusion about how certain defects are classified and help investigators avoid misnomers, misclassification, and/or misinterpretation, thus leading to a unified and standardized system to classify mitotic defects.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the members of the Cimini Lab for helpful discussions and critical reading of the manuscript. We apologize to our colleagues whose work could not be cited due to space constraints.

Funding

Work in the Cimini Lab is supported by the NSF grant MCB-1517506 and by a Dean’s Discovery Fund grant from the Virginia Tech College of Science. Additional support was provided by the Virginia Tech Fralin Life Science Institute.

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Correspondence to Daniela Cimini.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplemental file 1

Example excel spreadsheets that can be used for tallying mitotic index, mitotic stage distribution, and mitotic defect data. (XLSX 15 kb)

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Baudoin, N.C., Cimini, D. A guide to classifying mitotic stages and mitotic defects in fixed cells. Chromosoma 127, 215–227 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-018-0660-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-018-0660-2

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