92 Colchicine 



c-niitosis precludes cytokinesis; c-niitosis leads to a restitution nucleus; 

 c-mitosis prevents daughter nuclear formations; c-mitosis stops the 

 formations of daughter cells from a mother cell. Oin- sunniiary im- 

 plies — and similar implications can be found in the literature''^ — that, 

 whereas during c-mitosis the notable stages of a normal mitosis are 

 omitted, whereas a single nucleus is formed instead of two, and 

 whereas one cell begets one cell, the whole c-mitotic process appears to 

 be a quicker and shorter one. Seemingly, the reason for this is that the 

 arrested metaphase is a bypass method ultimately short-circuiting, by 

 the influence of colchicine, true division of a cell. But in reality, these 

 apparent abbreviations that woidd seem to shorten c-mitosis, re(|uire 

 more time than a regular mitosis ctnering similar chromosomal trans- 

 formations. For example, one c-mitosis takes 430 minutes compared 

 ^vith 155 minutes for a normal mitosis. ^'•'* Furthermore, during the 

 155 minutes, chromosomes become inxohed in metaphase, anaphase, 

 and telojjhase. During the 155 minutes, two cells each with a nucleus 

 are deri\ed from a mother cell and one nucleus. In other words, a 

 c-mitosis (430 minutes) that gives an impression ol a shorter pro- 

 cedine by omissions, actualh takes 2.8 times longer than the corre- 

 sponding control (155 minutes) . 



These comparative figures are accurate measurements from con- 

 tinuously recorded cases of individual living cells, passing through the 

 entire cycles of c-mitosis and mitosis, respectively. Contrary to these 

 time sequences, Epliedra pollen cells showed no difference between 

 treated and untreated cells.''^ However, changes may have influ- 

 enced these time sequences, so that transformations from prophase to 

 interphase took place without a delayed metaphase.''^ 



As jiointed out in Chapter 2 and summarily stated abo\e, a time 

 scale comparison between c-mitosis and normal mitosis is like pro- 

 jecting a moving picture in slow motion. Action for 155 minutes is 

 stretched out to 430 minutes. Noav. most of this extra time is taken 

 up while the chromosomes appear to lie scattered in the cytoplasm, 

 unoricnted because colchicine inacti\ated the spindle fibers, in con- 

 trast to the metaphase-anaphase stages that are oriented and activated 

 by spindle mechanisms. \Vc may refer to this phase as the "intactness 

 period" of the chromosomes. Chromosomes retain an individuality, an 

 intactness, ten times longer under colchicine than do those of the con- 

 trol cultine, because, out of 430 minutes, 249 are relegated to an in- 

 tactness period, against 23 oiu of the 155 in a contiol cell. Remem- 

 bering that such data are taken from living cells continuously observed 

 and recorded, these facts are sii^nificant. 



After a c-mitosis is accomplished, the restitution nucleus forms a 

 single unit that combines the chromosomes which regularly become 

 distributed equally among two daughter nuclei.'^'' Of coinse, a "pre- 



