Researchers make their debut with a first full vision of human cell division

The Allen Institute today released the Integrated Mitotic Stem Cell, a data-driven model and visualization tool that captures – for the first time – a holistic view of human cell division. By enabling a better understanding of the division of healthy human cells, a process known as mitosis, the model will deepen basic biology research as well as studies on cancer, a disease that often results from cell division abnormal.

"This is the first time we have seen all the major parts of the cell together during mitosis," said Rick Horwitz, Ph.D., executive director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science, a division of the Allen Institute. "Data visualization is crucial, and once this process is presented as a complete picture, you can begin to discover unexpected new relationships and ask totally new questions about cell division, and it will also serve as an essential starting point for normal human cells divide to be compared to cancer cells. "

Cell division is an integral part of humanity and all living things. This is how we move from a fertilized egg to the tens of billions of cells that make up our adult body, why we have specialized cells that form our organs and whose wounds we repair.

To divide, each cell must replicate its chromosomes, then split them equally into two daughter cells, properly separating the rest of the internal structures of the cell. It's a tightly choreographed cell dance that involves multiple players working together, with exquisite timing and multiple quality control checkpoints.

This precise choreography is essential to our health: tumors can form when a cell does not divide properly, leaving a daughter cell with too many chromosomes and one with too little.

"Mitosis is essential for cancer and cancer cells." Until now, research on mitosis and cancer focused primarily on chromosomes, but very little in a cell works in isolation. said Tom Misteli, Ph.D., director of National Cancer Cancer. Center for Cancer Research of the Institute and a member of one of the scientific advisory boards of the Allen Institute for Cell Science. "This new tool brings together all the elements, allowing researchers to connect the dots between different parts of the cell.We had not had it until now."

The integrated mitotic stem cell captures the assembly of 15 different key cell structures that change shape, duplicate or disappear and reassemble into human stem cells as these cells go through five stages of cell division. The tool was generated using 75 representative cell images taken from the nearly 40,000 images available in the Allen Cell Collection: a catalog of live human stem cell lines carefully edited by authors. scientists from the Allen Institute to highlight different structures with glowing fluorescent labels.

Users can view and rotate a 3-D view of one or all 15 structures during cell division, using two new viewers to explore a computer model developed from the superposition of 75 cell images. mitotic. They can also deepen the data used to generate the model, the measurements taken with the help of these tracing tools and a collection of 2,000 additional images of dividing stem cells.

"Biologists are looking at different cell images and looking at the relationships that have united them for decades, but to make accurate comparisons, we can not just hope that the mental model of a cell is the same for everyone," he said. said Graham Johnson, Ph.D., Director of the Animated Cell Team at the Allen Institute for Cell Science. "These visualizations allow us to directly examine many different structures at once by superimposing them in the same space, and scientists can now establish and discuss more concrete and accurate comparisons."

Researchers at the Allen Institute have made new observations about the coordinated behaviors of cell structures when dividing human stem cells with the help of the tool:

• There appears to be a "trigger point" in a stage of early prometaphase mitosis, where many of the cell structures undergo profound transformations at the same stage.
• The organization of structures in the cell is the least varied and the most stereotyped during metaphase, a critical step in mitosis just before the chromosomes start to separate from the two daughter cells.

"These observations would not be possible without an integrated view of mitosis, but these are just the beginning of what can be discovered," said Susanne Rafelski, Ph.D., director of test development at the University of Toronto. Allen Institute for Cell Science. "We hope that other researchers will find in this data new surprises that will allow us to better understand how our cells work."

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