Frailty of two cell cycle checkpoints which prevent entry into mitosis and progression through early mitotic stages in higher plant cells.

Allium cepa L. root meristems were given two short caffeine treatments spaced by 15 hours, the time which roughly corresponds to the duration of one cell cycle. In this way two subsequent cytokineses were prevented, and multinucleate cells with their in complement distributed into two, three or four nuclei were formed. Though all nuclei started to replicate synchronously in these cells, some of them (fast nuclei) completed their replication earlier than others (slow nuclei). The present report shows that two successive checkpoints operate before prometaphase in these cells. The first one prevents the entry of the fast nuclei into prophase until the slow ones have completed their replication. The second checkpoint ensures the synchronous entry into prometaphase after all nuclei have reached and finished prophase. By treating the multinucleate cells with an inhibitor of DNA synthesis at that time when fast but not slow nuclei had finished their replication, it was observed that both checkpoint mechanisms became leaky with time. Under these conditions the fast nuclei entered prophase in the presence of nuclei which were prevented from finishing the replication of their DNA. Subsequently, even prometaphase was triggered after a prolonged prophase. Finally, as expected from the presence of mitotic stages in these cells, nuclei with incompletely replicated DNA endured premature chromosome condensation. The prematurely condensed chromosomes either remained in a prometaphase-like stage until reconstitution nuclei formed or they followed the progression of the fast nuclei into metaphase and anaphase leading to the appearance of acentric chromosomal segments which after reconstitution gave rise to aneuploid nuclei containing unstable and broken DNA.