Tear Here

Ripping a sheet of paper exactly in half is almost impossible without some sort of guide – a mark or a fold. Spare a thought, then, for cells in an embryo, which must divide exactly in two over and over again. An uneven split risks developmental problems like aneuploidy (the wrong number of chromosomes). This computer simulation shows a newly-discovered guide to cell division, found in sea squirt cells. During mitosis, the stage of a cell’s life when it prepares to divide, each cell pulls part of its membrane inwards (on the right hand side of the red cell, for example). These tiny inward spikes help to position the cells’ centrosomes (blue and red dots here) – tiny anchor points involved in sharing DNA evenly between new 'daughter' cells. Such details may help to explain how cell division goes awry in embryonic development and in the progression of certain cancers.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Takefumi Negishi and colleagues
• National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Okazaki, Japan and Observatoire Océanologique, Sorbonne Universités, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, August 2016