If you have accepted high school biology, you might learn about the Cell Department: a critical process for all life forms formally known as mitosis. For more than a hundred years, students have learned that during mitosis, parents become spherical before they are divided into two daughter cells of the same size and shape. However, a new study could rewrite many biology textbooks.
The researchers revealed that mitosis does not always have cell rounding (when the parent cells become spherical), meaning that the resulting daughter cells are not always symmetrical and do not have the same function. Their work was detailed in a study published Thursday in the journal Science and is of great significance to understanding cell division in diseases such as cancer.
“When the cell divides, it will produce a unified spherical shape. However, our study shows that in a real organism, it is not that simple,” Shane Herbert, a researcher at the School of Biology, Medicine and Health of the University of Manchester, said in the university statement.
In the new study, researchers observed vascular formation in zebrafish embryos. The growth of the new container consists of a slow moving cell led by a single fast moving cell. When lead cells undergo mitosis, it does not become spherical or empirical rounding. The asymmetric division causes it to form two different cells: a slow moving cell and a fast moving cell to pull the position of the mother cell. Previously, scientists had primarily asymmetric cell divisions associated with specialized cells called stem cells.
“Using a transparent 1-day old zebrafish embryo allows us to study a dynamic process, such as cell division inside a living organism,” said Holly Lovegrove, co-leading author of the study and lecturer in cardiovascular science at the University of Manchester. “So we were able to make movies of this basic cellular behavior and doing so reveals new aspects of how tissues grow.”
Furthermore, the researchers pointed out that the shape of the mother cell can determine whether its division is symmetric or asymmetric. For example, they observed that shorter and wider cells were more likely to become spherical and split into two similar daughter cells. In contrast, longer and thinner cells are not “reviewed” and therefore divide asymmetrically.
To investigate this further, Herbert, Lovegrove and colleagues manipulated the size of human blast cells through micropatterning. “The micro-patterning allows us to generate microscopic proteins of specific shapes that cells can stick to,” explains Georgia Hulmes, co-first author of the study. “The cells will then take the shape of the plaque. So this allows us to change the shape of the cells and test how these shapes affect subsequent cell divisions.”
“Our research shows that shape before cell division can fundamentally guide a cell bomb, and it is important if its daughter is symmetrical or asymmetrical in size and function,” Herbert said.
As a result, scientists may one day be able to produce cells with different functions by controlling the shape of their mother cells. More broadly, their analysis shows that asymmetric division plays an important role in the creation of different tissues and organs. The study also has important implications for diseases such as cancer, where asymmetric division may lead to different cellular behaviors that may be associated with cancer progression.
Meanwhile, our idea is with all students, parents and school administrators who may soon have to spend a lot of money on updated textbooks.
