What is the difference between a spindle fibre and asters?

Great question! As a student I used to always get confused with the two. I'm not going to try to confuse you further with big scientific words, here is a simple way of looking at it.



A spindle fiber is one single filament which is coming from the poles into the center. Remember that this spindle fiber is not apart of the chromosome, it just helps with holding everything in place.



Asters are also sinlge filaments projecting out from the centrioles, but the difference here is location. Because these filaments are directly outside of the centrioles, togather they form a star shaped structure(aster), so they are called asters.



So the only difference is where they are and what job they hold, don't worry too much about the difference though, just try to focus on what everything does and you'll be fine!

Hope that answers your question, Good luck!
What is the difference between a spindle fibre and asters?
Asters are the small projections emanating from a microtubule organizing center and oriented away from the cell's equatorial plane during mitosis and meiosis. Spindle fibers grow towards the equatorial plane and attach to the centrosomal kinetochores, thereby providing a molecular motor for chromosomal segregation. Both are microtubules and are composed of the same 55 kilodalton dimeric protein - tubulin.
Reply:Spindle fiber: microtubule found in the cell during mitosis, upon which chromsomes are moved.



home.sandiego.edu/~cloer/bio376/376glo...



Aster: an organized microtubule array, with the microtubule minus-ends focused at a point or centrosome, and the plus-ends emanating outwards.



www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v5/n6/gloss...
Reply:the spindle fibers are the things that look like strings across the cell. they are what the chromosomes line up on



asters are what look like a dot at each end of a cell that the spindle fibers attached to.



i would fax you my worksheet with the pictures and labeled structures if i could.
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