Divide or Die?

Some people call it luck, others call it destiny; whichever way you see it, success is often down to being in the right place at the right time. This is as true for cells as it is for people. Researchers investigated how location affects potentially cancerous cells. Studying developing fruit fly wings, they created mutant cells lacking the genes that prevent tumour formation. These cells behaved differently depending on their position within the tissue. In so-called 'hotspots' they rampantly divided but elsewhere they died. Cells in hotspots were structurally different in several ways. One difference, revealed by electron microscopy and shown here falsely coloured, was the presence of many more protrusions (red) extending from the base of cells in these regions. Uncovering whether such differences in tissue architecture produce tumour hotspots in mammalian cells is next on the agenda.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image by Yoichiro Tamori, Emiko Suzuki and Wu-Min Deng
• Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, September 2016