DNA damage associated with mitosis and cytokinesis failure.

Mitosis is a highly dynamic process, aimed at separating identical copies of genomic material into two daughter cells. A failure of the mitotic process generates cells that carry abnormal chromosome numbers. Such cells are predisposed to become tumorigenic upon continuous cell division and thus need to be removed from the population to avoid cancer formation. Cells that fail in mitotic progression indeed activate cell death or cell cycle arrest pathways; however, these mechanisms are not well understood. Growing evidence suggests that the formation of de novo DNA damage during and after mitotic failure is one of the causal factors that initiate those pathways. Here, we analyze several distinct malfunctions during mitosis and cytokinesis that lead to de novo DNA damage generation.