Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

U2os Cells Lacking Chk1 Undergo Aberrant Mitosis And Fail To Activate The Spindle Checkpoint, Laura Carrassa, Yolanda Sanchez, Eugenio Erba, Giovanna Damia

Dartmouth Scholarship

Chk1 is a conserved protein kinase originally identified in fission yeast, required to delay entry of cells with damaged or unreplicated DNA into mitosis. The requirement of Chk1 for both S and G2/M checkpoints has been elucidated while only few studies have connected Chk1 to the mitotic spindle checkpoint. We used a small interference RNA strategy to investigate the role of Chk1 in unstressed conditions. Chk1 depletion in U2OS human osteosarcoma cells inhibited cell proliferation and raised the percentage of cells with a 4N DNA content, which correlated with accumulation of giant polynucleated cells morphologically distinct from apoptotic cells, while …