Vol.30 No.3 (2008 June): 357-361

Assembly and Significance of Centrosome during Parthenogenesis of Insects

Pu Yang, Zeng-Rong Zhu*, Han-Wu Shang¹, Jia-An Cheng

(State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology, Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, China; ¹China Jiliang University, Hangzhou 310018, China)

Abstract Centrosome is the main microtubule organizing center, and organizes the spindle of mitosis. Recent studies on the centrosome organization after meiosis of insect oocyte may contribute to understand the cytological process and mechanism, evolution and formation of parthenogenesis in insects. We review the pathways of the first mitosis spindle assembly, organization of centrosome and the significance of centrosome in insect parthenogenesis. A key feature of parthenogenesis in insects is that mitosis is based on the reassembled centrosomes without contribution from sperm centriole. It may be speculated that the release of the block preventing centrosome self-organization could be a landmark for ensuring parthenogenesis.

Key words parthenogenesis; mitosis; centrosome; spindle; organization

Received: November 19, 2007 Accepted: February 29, 2008
This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No.2002CB111403-3) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.30571241)
*Corresponding author. Tel/Fax: 86-571-86971623, E-mail: zrzhu@zju.edu.cn