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Spinning into Control
07 March 2012

Spinning into Control

Cell division is a violent process. The cell’s cytoskeleton must be ripped apart, and all of the pieces tugged around and reorganised into two identical cells. Dramatic events like this are difficult to observe directly in the lab, so biologists must be inventive. Using knowledge about the machinery of cell division in yeast, mathematical modelling allows ‘virtual’ experiments to be done. Here we see one such simulation predicting how the cell’s muscles, the motor proteins (shown in in red), might pull the cytoskeleton filaments (shown in blue and green) into a spiralling vortex, a pattern never observed before in the cell. Such insight is just one example of how powerful mathematical models can be. It is no wonder that mathematicians, computer scientists and physicists are an increasingly frequent sight in the modern biology lab.

Written by John Ankers

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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