Table 1.

Troubleshooting.

Step	Problem	Possible Reason	Possible Solution
114	Arrays are over- or undersaturated (Figure 5c)	Too much or not enough of the histones were used for chromatin assembly	Titrate amounts of histone proteins again to achieve 90–100 % array saturation
117	Large bead aggregates form during the coupling process (Figure 5d)	Arrays are oversaturated	Titrate amounts of histone proteins again to achieve 90–100 % array saturation
Box 2 (step 6)	Low quality eggs (strings of eggs, puffy eggs or activated eggs comprise more than 10% of the whole batch)	frogs have been ovulated too frequently; frogs are old; frogs are stressed	rest frogs between ovulations for longer time periods; replace old frogs in the colony; remove potential stressor (e.g. noise, bad water quality)
119Ai	Chromatin beads stick to side of tubes	CSF-XB buffer was not supplemented with Triton-X-100	Add 0.05% Triton X-100 to CSF-XB buffer before washing the chromatin beads
119Dxxi	Extract did not exit from mitosis	Extract quality was low or not enough calcium was added	retry with fresh extract and add more calcium; make sure the water temperature does not exceed 16–18°C during the experiment
	No mitotic arrest in appropriate samples detected	kinetochore assembly was inefficient; temperature of waterbath was too high	retry with fresh extract and add more calcium; make sure the water temperature does not exceed 16–18°C during the experiment
135	No kinetochore or spindle assembly checkpoint proteins were detected	extract quality was low; kinetochore assembly was inefficient due to low array quality	retry with fresh extract; assemble new arrays