Individual nuclei differ in their sensitivity to the cytoplasmic inducers of DNA synthesis: implications for the origin of cell cycle variability.

Nuclei of multinucleate cells generally initiate DNA synthesis simultaneously, suggesting that the timing of DNA synthesis depends upon the appearance of a cytoplasmic signal. In contrast, intact nuclei from quiescent mammalian cells initiate DNA synthesis asynchronously in cell-free extracts of Xenopus eggs, despite the common environment. Here we show that the two nuclei of permeabilized binucleate cells enter DNA synthesis coordinately in egg extracts, as they do in vivo, with different pairs of nuclei initiating replication at different times. This indicates that the two nuclei of a binucleate cell are identical in their sensitivity to the inducers of DNA synthesis in egg extracts; this sensitivity varies in general between the nuclei of unrelated cells. The asynchrony of DNA synthesis shown by unrelated nuclei in egg extracts is therefore not an artifact of the cell-free system but a reflection of genuine differences preexisting within the intact cell. Evidence that these differences between nuclei are responsible for a substantial fraction of G1 variability in living cells is presented.