Abstract

How does a mother cell divide its chromosomes equally among its two daughter cells? Lessons from yeasts to humans on understanding the origins of aggressive cancers.

In the lifetime of a human being, billions of cells divide. Each of these cell division events has to be orchestrated in a precise and error free manner, to achieve the ultimate goal of cell division – separating the mother cell’s chromosomes into two equal sets for the two daughter cells. We now know that this high-level of precision in chromosome segregation throughout life is achieved by a sensitive surveillance mechanism that is shared among several life forms from yeasts to humans. Any failure in the surveillance machinery will result in irregular number of chromosomes, as often seen in aggressive cancer cells. Using live-cell movies, the talk will highlight the molecular players that are critical for the success of the robust surveillance mechanism and will open the floor to discuss about tools that can be designed to help diagnosis and treatment of cancers.

The short talk will try to reach out to a wide audience interested in cancer biology, cutting-edge microscopy techniques, associated computational challenges, complex molecular machines, evolutionarily conserved regulation, or simply watching movies of human cells undergoing division.