Prof. SHI Qinghua of the Institute of Life Sciences, a part of the University of Science and Technology of China, and Dr. Randall W. King at Harvard Medical School have successfully unveiled the birth path of aneuploid cells that may cause cancers, through a movie telling the segregation and growth of human cell lines and using molecular biological techniques. Published in the October 13 issue of the journal Nature with an accompanying comment, the finding provides an important clue for tracking the origin of cancerous cells.
Two scientists tracked down the cell segregation process, and examined the composition of cells?¯ chromosomes, using time-lapse imaging approaches and molecular biological techniques. They revealed that when a cell missegregates a chromosome, it also inhibits cytokinesis, producing a tetraploid cell. A tetraploid cell would cease to segregate on a normal occasion. If the segregation continues, there is the possibility to produce the cells with errors in chromosome number, which may eventually cause the occurrence of tumors.
Prof. SHI told reporters that as the findings were obtained in an in-vitro cell culture environment, further studies are needed to confirm whether the same mechanism exists in human and animals, and to explain how cells tell an error in chromosome segregation and inhibit cytokinesis, and what factors determine if a tetraploid cell shall continue to segregate. His lab is working hard to address these issues, and hopefully will come up with theoretical evidences for alleviating the tortures of aneuploid diseases on humans.
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