Carvalhal, S., Ribeiro, S.A., Arocena, M., Kasciukovic, T., Temme, A., Koehler, K., Huebner, A., Griffis, E.R. (2015). The nucleoporin ALADIN regulates Aurora A localization to ensure robust mitotic spindle formation.  Mol. Biol. Cell 26(19): 3424--3438.

FBrf0242398

Research paper

The formation of the mitotic spindle is a complex process that requires massive cellular reorganization. Regulation by mitotic kinases controls this entire process. One of these mitotic controllers is Aurora A kinase, which is itself highly regulated. In this study, we show that the nuclear pore protein ALADIN is a novel spatial regulator of Aurora A. Without ALADIN, Aurora A spreads from centrosomes onto spindle microtubules, which affects the distribution of a subset of microtubule regulators and slows spindle assembly and chromosome alignment. ALADIN interacts with inactive Aurora A and is recruited to the spindle pole after Aurora A inhibition. Of interest, mutations in ALADIN cause triple A syndrome. We find that some of the mitotic phenotypes that we observe after ALADIN depletion also occur in cells from triple A syndrome patients, which raises the possibility that mitotic errors may underlie part of the etiology of this syndrome.

PMC4591688 (PMC) (EuropePMC)