Taxol inhibited HeLa cell proliferation by inducing a sustained mitotic block at the metaphase/anaphase boundary. Half-maximal inhibition of cell proliferation occurred at 8 nM taxol, and mitosis was half-maximally blocked at 8 nM taxol. Inhibition of mitosis was associated with formation of an incomplete metaphase plate of chromosomes and an altered arrangement of spindle microtubules that strongly resembled the abnormal organization that occurs with low concentrations of vinblastine and other antimitotic compounds. No increase in microtubule polymer mass occurred below 10 nM taxol. The mass of microtubules increased half-maximally at 80 nM taxol and attained maximal levels (5 times normal) at 330 nM taxol. At submicromolar concentrations, taxol suppressed growing and shortening at the ends of microtubules reassembled in vitro from bovine brain tubulin in a manner that resembled suppression by vinblastine. Taxol was concentrated in HeLa cells several hundredfold to levels that were similar to those which suppressed dynamic instability in vitro. The results indicate that taxol shares a common antiproliferative mechanism with vinblastine. At its lowest effective concentrations, taxol appears to block mitosis by kinetically stabilizing spindle microtubules and not by changing the mass of polymerized microtubules.

We have characterized the effects of vinblastine on the dynamic instability behavior of individual microtubules in living BS-C-1 cells microinjected with rhodamine-labeled tubulin and have found that at low concentrations (3-64 nM), vinblastine potently suppresses dynamic instability without causing net microtubule depolymerization. Vinblastine suppressed the rates of microtubule growth and shortening, and decreased the frequency of transitions from growth or pause to shortening, also called catastrophe. In vinblastine-treated cells, both the average duration of a pause (a state of attenuated dynamics where neither growth nor shortening could be detected) and the percentage of total time spent in pause were significantly increased. Vinblastine potently decreased dynamicity, a measure of the overall dynamic activity of microtubules, reducing this parameter by 75% at 32 nM. The present work, consistent with earlier in vitro studies, demonstrates that vinblastine kinetically caps the ends of microtubules in living cells and supports the hypothesis that the potent chemotherapeutic action of vinblastine as an antitumor drug is suppression of mitotic spindle microtubule dynamics. Further, the results indicate that molecules that bind to microtubule ends can regulate microtubule dynamic behavior in living cells and suggest that endogenous regulators of microtubule dynamics that work by similar mechanisms may exist in living cells.

Stathmin is a ubiquitous microtubule destabilizing protein that is believed to play an important role linking cell signaling to the regulation of microtubule dynamics. Here we show that stathmin strongly destabilizes microtubule minus ends in vitro at steady state, conditions in which the soluble tubulin and microtubule levels remain constant. Stathmin increased the minus end catastrophe frequency ϳ13-fold at a stathmin:tubulin molar ratio of 1:5. Stathmin steady-state catastrophe-promoting activity was considerably stronger at the minus ends than at the plus ends. Consistent with its ability to destabilize minus ends, stathmin strongly increased the treadmilling rate of bovine brain microtubules. By immunofluorescence microscopy, we also found that stathmin binds to purified microtubules along their lengths in vitro. Co-sedimentation of purified microtubules polymerized in the presence of a 1:5 initial molar ratio of stathmin to tubulin yielded a binding stoichiometry of 1 mol of stathmin per ϳ14.7 mol of tubulin in the microtubules. The results firmly establish that stathmin can increase the steady-state catastrophe frequency by a direct action on microtubules, and furthermore, they indicate that an important regulatory action of stathmin in cells may be to destabilize microtubule minus ends.

Microtubule dynamics are influenced by interactions of microtubules with cellular factors and by changes in the primary sequence of the tubulin molecule. Mutations of yeast ␤-tubulin C354, which is located near the binding site of some antimitotic compounds, reduce microtubule dynamicity greater than 90% in vivo and in vitro. The resulting intrinsically stable microtubules allowed us to determine which, if any, cellular processes are dependent on dynamic microtubules. The average number of cytoplasmic microtubules decreased from 3 in wild-type to 1 in mutant cells. The single microtubule effectively located the bud site before bud emergence. Although spindles were positioned near the bud neck at the onset of anaphase, the mutant cells were deficient in preanaphase spindle alignment along the mother-bud axis. Spindle microtubule dynamics and spindle elongation rates were also severely depressed in the mutants. The pattern and extent of cytoplasmic microtubule dynamics modulation through the cell cycle may reveal the minimum dynamic properties required to support growth. The ability to alter intrinsic microtubule dynamics and determine the in vivo phenotype of cells expressing the mutant tubulin provides a critical advance in assessing the dynamic requirements of an essential gene function.

Inhibition of mitosis by many drugs that bind to tubulin has been attributed to depolymerization of microtubules. However, we found previously that low concentrations of vinblastine and vincristine blocked mitosis in HeLa cells with little or no depolymerization of spindle microtubules, and spindles appeared morphologically normal or nearly normal. In the present study, we characterized the effects of vinblastine, podophyllotoxin and nocodazole over broad concentration ranges on mitotic spindle organization in HeLa cells. These three drugs are known to affect the dynamics of microtubule polymerization in vitro and to depolymerize microtubules in cells. We wanted to probe further whether mitotic inhibition by these drugs is brought about by a more subtle effect on the microtubules than net microtubule depolymerization. We compared the effects of vinblastine, podophyllotoxin and nocodazole on the organization of spindle microtubules, chromosomes and centrosomes, and on the total mass of microtubules. Spindle organization was examined by immunofluorescence microscopy, and microtubule polymer mass was assayed on isolated cytoskeletons by a quantitative enzyme-linked immunoadsorbence assay for tubulin. As the drug concentration was increased, the organization of mitotic spindles changed in the same way with all three drugs. The changes were associated with mitotic arrest, but were not necessarily accompanied by net microtubule depolymerization. With podophyllotoxin, mitotic arrest was accompanied by microtubule depolymerization. In contrast, with vinblastine and nocodazole, mitotic arrest occurred in the presence of a full complement of spindle microtubules. All three drugs induced a nearly identical rearrangement of spindle microtubules, an increasingly aberrant organization of metaphase chromosomes, and fragmentation of centrosomes. The data suggest that these anti-mitotic drugs block mitosis primarily by inhibiting the dynamics of spindle microtubules rather than by simply depolymerizing the microtubules.