Without centromeres, cells cannot divide properly and the overall process of mitosis fails. Why are these small chromosomal regions so essential to such a major cellular process? With a few exceptions ...

The five phases of mitosis and cell division tightly coordinate the movements of hundreds of proteins. How did early biologists unravel this complex dance of chromosomes? The most obvious difference ...

Researchers demonstrated gene bypass events for mitosis using evolutionary repair experiments. They found a novel connection between genes involved in mitosis and glucose metabolism. This connection ...

As viewed from a human perspective, nature has done some ingenious engineering to overcome some of the obstacles it has faced. Take the evolution of sex, for instance. To make the move from asexual to ...

In the process of replicating themselves, cells have another choice: do they want to make an identical copy and be left with two cells? Or do they want to make four “half-copies”, in preparation for ...

Cell division ensures growth or renewal and is thus vital for all organisms. However, the process differs somewhat in animals, bacteria, fungi, plants, and algae. Until now, little was known about how ...

Every day, our cells are hard at work multiplying. Cell division is a precise process, but sometimes this process is impaired and diseases like cancer occur. Mitosis is one of the most important ...

Mitosis and meiosis are both processes by which cells reproduce, but there are distinct differences between the two. While new cells are generated during mitosis, meiosis is a special type of cell ...

The human body is made up of billions of cells. These cells grow and divide through a process called cell division. There are two types of cell division: mitosis and meiosis. Mitosis is a type of cell ...