CytokinesisinArabidopsisthaliana.PDF

Cell Edges Accumulate Gamma Tubulin Complex Components and Nucleate Microtubules following Cytokinesis in Arabidopsis thaliana Chris Ambrose, Geoffrey O. Wasteneys* Department of Botany, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Abstract Microtubules emanate from distinct organizing centers in fungal and animal cells. In plant cells, by contrast, microtubules initiate from dispersed sites in the cell cortex, where they then self-organize into parallel arrays. Previous ultrastructural evidence suggested that cell edges participate in microtubule nucleation but so far there has been no direct evidence for this. Here we use live imaging to show that components of the gamma tubulin nucleation complex (GCP2 and GCP3) localize at distinct sites along the outer periclinal edge of newly formed crosswalls, and that microtubules grow predominantly away from these edges. These data confirm a role for cell edges in microtubule nucleation, and suggest that an asymmetric distribution of microtubule nucleation factors contributes to cortical microtubule organization in plants, in a manner more similar to other kingdoms than previously thought. Citation: Ambrose C, Wasteneys GO (2011) Cell Edges Accumulate Gamma Tubulin Complex Components and Nucleate Microtubules following Cytokinesis in Arabidopsis thaliana . PLoS ONE 6(11): e27423. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027423 ˚ Editor: Markus Grebe, Umea Plant Science Centre, Sweden Received August 12, 2011; Accepted October 17, 2011; Published November 9, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Ambrose, Wasteneys. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cr