Trying to hit a target size before dividing seems like the best strategy for maintaining a precise cell size, but bacteria don't do that. Now we know why. When a single bacterial cell divides into two ...

If you took high school biology, you probably learned about cell division: a crucial process in all life forms officially called mitosis. For over one hundred years, students have learned that during ...

When we talk about memories in biology, we tend to focus on the brain and the storage of information in neurons. But there are lots of other memories that persist within our cells. Cells remember ...

Among the many marvels of life is the cell's ability to divide and thus enable organisms to grow and renew themselves. For this, the cell must duplicate its DNA—its genome—and segregate it equally ...

Researchers discovered that a long-misunderstood protein plays a key role in helping chromosomes latch onto the right “tracks” during cell division. Instead of acting like a motor, it works more like ...

David Pellman (left) is a professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (both MA, USA), who also has affiliations with Howard Hughes Medical Institute (MD, USA) and the ...

Until now, cells dividing by mitosis were thought to grow round and then split into two identical, spherical daughter cells. New research has found that some cells are isomorphic, meaning they retain ...

Every day, our bodies perform around 330 billion cell divisions to keep us alive and functioning. These divisions rely on the cell cycle, which has been in place since the earliest bacteria. The ...

Ichthyosporeans Sphaeroforma arctica and Chromosphaera perkinsii undergoing mitosis, depicted as two halves of a cell, rendered in Haeckel-inspired tones and a naturalist style. Cell division is one ...

Scientists have revealed new plant cell walls can have significantly different mechanical properties compared to surrounding parental cell walls, enabling cells to change their local shape and ...

Plants are made up of very rigid cells. Much like bricks in a wall, this feature gives them the structural support to maintain their shape and to stand upright against gravity. However, just like any ...