Colchicine, an alkaloid used in plant breeding and karyotype analysis, arrests cell division at which specific stage of mitosis, and what is its primary mechanism of action?

Options:

• A: Prophase, by preventing the condensation of chromatin into chromosomes.
• B: Metaphase, by inhibiting microtubule polymerization and preventing spindle fiber formation.
• C: Anaphase, by preventing the enzymatic cleavage of cohesin proteins at the centromere.
• D: Telophase, by blocking the formation of the contractile ring during cytokinesis.

Related Practice Questions:

• Let $S_1$ and $S_2$ be two disjoint, non-empty convex sets in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Under which of the following conditions is there guaranteed to exist a hyperplane that strictly separates $S_1$ and $S_2$?
• Let the primal linear programming problem be: Maximize $Z = c^T x$ subject to $Ax \le b, x \ge 0$. If this primal problem has an unbounded optimal objective value, then which of the following statements is always true regarding its dual problem?
• Let $S = \{(x, y) \in \mathbb{R}^2 \mid x^2 + y^2 \le 9\}$ be a convex set in $\mathbb{R}^2$. The set of all extreme points of $S$ is given by:
• In a linear programming problem with $3$ independent equality constraints and $5$ variables (including slack/surplus variables), what is the maximum possible number of basic solutions?