Abstract
The study of MT has been linked from the start with that of mitosis, even before the identification of spindle “fibers” as MT and the role of MT in accessory structures such as the centrioles became evident. The earliest work on colchicine cytotoxicity [175] illustrated the mitotic changes (Chap. 1), and modern colchicine research was the outcome of work on mitotic poisons [52, 137]. The importance of colchicine poisoning of mitosis for many years outshadowed the more fundamental problems, which could only find an answer after the purification of tubulin and the demonstration of the specific binding of colchicine to this protein (cf. Chaps. 2 and 5). Spindle poisons have for nearly fourty years played a considerable role in the study of mitotic growth, cytogenetics, and the production of polyploid or amphidiploid plants. These aspects of “applied„ research on mitosis with spindle poisons will not be considered here, and this chapter will be limited to the fundamental problems of the role of MT in mitotic movements.
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