We describe a method to assemble meiotic spindles on immobilized micropatterns of chromatin built on a first layer of biotinylated BSA deposited by microcontact printing. Such chromatin patterns routinely produce bipolar spindles with a yield of 60%, and offer the possibility to follow spindle assembly dynamics, from the onset of nucleation to the establishment of a quasi steady state. Hundreds of spindles can be recorded in parallel for different experimental conditions. We also describe the semi-automated image analysis pipeline, which is used to analyze the assembly kinetics of spindle arrays, or the final morphological diversity of the spindles.
Keywords: Automated image analysis; Chromatin micropatterns; Meiotic spindle movements; Spindle array.
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