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. 2020 Feb 25;9(3):613. doi: 10.3390/jcm9030613

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© 2020 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Micronucleus formation during mitotic cell division. A micronucleus can form when a chromosome lags in anaphase, resulting in missegregation and exclusion from the main nucleus upon cytokinesis. This can, for example, occur when the bipolar mitotic spindle fails to capture and segregate chromosomes because of microtubule/kinetochore malfunction (above) or when sister chromatids are entangled throughout mitosis by unresolved replication intermediates (arising in S-phase) that persist as DNA bridges (below) and prohibit faithful segregation. Chromosomes entrapped in micronuclei are accompanied by an unstable nuclear envelope and show delayed replication and susceptibility to DSBs and pulverization. These dramatic mitotic segregation errors are proposed to lead to the dramatic chromosomal rearrangements observed in chromothripsis.