as small as a world and as large as alone

1:24pm March 24, 2013

biocanvas:

Before a cell divides, it must carefully check that all of its systems are normal and operational before initiating division. Cancers are often riddled with mistakes in this machinery, allowing a cell to divide uncontrollably without first ensuring everything is “good to go.”  In this Ashbya gossypii fungus, the CLN3 protein (orange, with nuclei in blue) helps initiate the commitment to cell division given that the cell correctly passes its initial checkpoint.

Image by ChangHwan Lee, Dartmouth College.

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