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Commentary: Rab GTPase: A New Mitotic Delivery Service.


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Authors

Capalbo, Luisa 

Abstract

Mitosis is a crucial event that controls the equal partitioning of the genetic information between the two daughter cells. Failure in this process can cause various human genetic diseases and can contribute to cancer onset and development. For many years cell division studies focused on the identification and analysis of the mechanisms and signalling pathways that control microtubule dynamics and chromosome behaviour, however in recent years other important cellular and regulatory processes have been implicated in various aspects of cell division and our traditional view of mitosis has changed. In particular several studies have highlighted the importance of membranes (Civelekoglu-Scholey et al., 2010; Poirier et al., 2010; Schweizer et al., 2014; Zheng, 2010) and membrane trafficking proteins (Liu and Zheng, 2009; Royle et al., 2005) during mitosis and revealed that many proteins known for their function in membrane trafficking in interphase have also a role during the mitotic process. In 2011 two papers reported a new role for the small GTPase Rab5 during mitosis and that this new function had been conserved through evolution (Capalbo et al., 2011; Serio et al., 2011). These papers found an unexpected new regulatory role for Rab5 GTPase in mitotic progression and regulation of membrane dynamics during nuclear envelope breakdown both in Drosophila melanogaster and human cells. They also reported that Rab5 is required for the correct alignment of chromosomes at the metaphase plate, an important step for the proper segregation of chromosomes.

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Keywords

Rab11, Rab5, membrane proteins, mitosis, spindle envelope

Journal Title

Front Cell Dev Biol

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2296-634X
2296-634X

Volume Title

3

Publisher

Frontiers Media SA