The spindle assembly checkpoint ensures accurate chromosome segregation during mitosis. The checkpoint arrests mitotic progression until the kinetochores on each chromosome properly attach to the spindle. Despite fluctuating noise, this checkpoint remains robust and remarkably sensitive to even a single unattached kinetochore among many attached kinetochores; moreover, the checkpoint is silenced only after the final kinetochore-spindle attachment. Experiments show that checkpoint components stream from the attached kinetochores along microtubules toward the spindle poles. This work is about a theoretical model that incorporates the streaming behavior and characterizes the spatiotemporal pattern of checkpoint components. The model explains how poleward streaming amounts to a robust checkpoint silencing signal at the spindle pole. The model underscores the whole mitotic spindle as mediator for checkpoint signaling. In addition, the model was leveraged to aberrant spindle assembly found in many cancer cells, as well as size scaling laws in spindle assembly across metazoan species.

Dr. Chen Jing received her B.S. from Fudan University (China) in 2002 and M.S. from Technical University of Munich (Germany) in 2004. She then went to University of California Berkeley (USA) and received her Ph.D. in 2010. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at National Institutes of Health (USA), she joined the Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech (USA) as an assistant professor in 2016. Dr. Chen’s research interests mainly focus on Theoretical and Computational Modeling of Cell Biology, Systems Biology, Spatiotemporal Regulation, and Mechano-biochemistry.