The awe-inspiring process of cell division can turn a fertilized egg into a baby – or a cancerous cell into a malignant tumor. With so much at stake, nature keeps it tightly controlled in a process ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have built a computer simulation that tracks the entire life cycle ...

A metabolic enzyme studied for over seven decades has a hidden second function—it can unwind RNA and promote cell cycle progression, an additional function beyond its role in energy production, ...

Before cells can divide, they first need to replicate all of their chromosomes, so that each of the daughter cells can receive a full set of genetic material. Until now, scientists had believed that ...

A simulated cell in the early stages of division. Left half shows membrane (green cubes), and ribosomes (yellow/purple) ...

A simulated cell in the early stages of division. Left half shows cytoplasm (blue cubes), mRNA degradation machinery molecules (pink), and sugar transporters (brown). Right half adds the membrane ...

A zebrafish embryo during the first cell division cycle, with the structural protein actin labelled, which marks the cell boundary and ingressing furrow. The image shows a time course from dark orange ...

Biologists have uncovered a quality control timing mechanism tied to cell division. The 'stopwatch' function keeps track of mitosis and acts as a protective measure when the process takes too long, ...

Before a cell can divide, it has to precisely duplicate its entire genetic information. However, the DNA in the cell exists as part of a DNA-protein complex known as chromatin. For this purpose, the ...

A metabolic enzyme also binds and unwinds RNA to promote translation of cell cycle genes. This dual role links energy status to cell division, revealing a molecular switch that controls growth, and ...