Abstract

In some abnormal cells, an excessive number of centrosomes can form more than two spindle poles that may orchestrate atypical mitosis, where the chromosome complement is pulled into three or more directions at anaphase, and then one cell divides into three or more daughter cells. In this review, we discuss several examples of atypical mitosis and mechanisms of atypical mitosis in cancer. Molecules involved in atypical mitosis are summarized. For more than one hundred years, since mitosis was found by Walther Flemming in 1870s, people have learned that cells can divide from one into two. However, in recent years, researchers found more and more evidences supporting that there are other kinds of atypical cell divisions, such as one cell divides into three, four or even more daughter cells at a time.1–9 These atypical divisions are called tripolar and multipolar mitosis. Atypical mitosis has been observed in common cancers, virus-infected cells, the placenta and in the early embryos.10 Dysfunctional multipolar mitotic figures usually indicate neoplasia in histopathological examination. Although it’s a common sense nowadays that cancer is essentially a disease of mitosis, it is still not clear whether atypical mitosis is the cause or a consequence of cancers. However, atypical mitosis often randomly distributes DNA into daughter cells, leading to genomic instability. So it’s very necessary to put an emphasis on this promising and underdeveloped topic for cancer research. This review will give an overall summary to the previous studies for atypical mitosis and focus on the link between atypical mitosis and cancer

Keywords

atypical mitosis, cancer cells