At the beginning of prophase, the components of the pre-rRNA processing machinery do not remain in the vicinity of the rDNAs (Gautier et al. 1992 ) but become partially distributed over the surface of all the chromosomes (reviewed in Hernandez-Verdun et al. 1993) . The nucleolar proteins that relocate to the chromosome periphery are components of the DFC and GC of the active nucleolus. In living cells, nucleolar proteins tagged with GFP are concentrated around the chromosomes during mitosis and migrate with the chromosomes (Savino et al. 2001) . However, the mechanisms maintaining interactions of nucleolar processing proteins with chromosomes during mitosis have not been characterized. The colocalization of the diVerent factors involved in pre-rRNA processing suggests that processing complexes are at least to some extent maintained during mitosis. It is as yet unknown whether migration of the nucleolar processing proteins occurring at the onset of mitosis (Fan and Penman 1971) takes place as a consequence of the arrest of pre-rRNA synthesis or whether it is also regulated. Indeed, it is noticeable that (1) during prophase, the components of the rRNA processing machinery appear to be delocalized before total repression of rDNA transcription occurs, and (2) the most recently synthesized pre-rRNAs accumulate as partially processed 45S pre-rRNAs (Dousset et al. 2000) suggesting that total repression of pre-rRNA processing could occur prior to total repression of rDNA transcription. These observations therefore raise the possibility that rDNA transcription and pre-rRNA processing are both repressed during prophase by distinct mechanisms.