Tug-of-cell war

Researchers at the School of Life Sciences have made an exciting new discovery on how cells regulate themselves and prevent cancer.

Dr Tomo Tanaka and his team - Drs Hilary Dewar and Kozo Tanaka - have uncovered a tug of war that cells use to collect their full complement of correct chromosomes. The absence of this tug of war leads to irregular cells, tumours, cancer and congenital disorders such as Downs syndrome.

How daughter cells get all their chromosomes has, until now, been a mystery. But now that the team know how cells collect their vital information, they can explore how cells prevent cancers and other diseases by ensuring proper chromosome inheritance during cell division.

Dr Tanaka said, "As a cowboy catches a wild horse by his lasso, each daughter cell captures chromosomes by a rope-like apparatus and then drags them to her side before she finally divides from her sister.

Our data suggest that cells are able to know if they have captured the right chromosomes or not by playing a tug-of-war game for them.

This game is possible because duplicated chromosomes still attach to each other when they are captured by ropes. If cells do not feel a tug, they realise that they have grabbed the wrong chromosomes. In this case, daughter cells have to throw another rope toward a chromosome and repeat this process until they capture the right one."

Dr Lesley Walker, Director of Cancer Information, Cancer Research UK said, "This work sheds light on how dividing cells ensure that the genetic material is shared evenly between their daughter cells. By understanding how healthy cells work, we can gain considerable insight into what goes wrong in cancer. Thus world-class research like this is crucial for increasing our understanding of the biology of cancer, and could ultimately pave the way for new approaches to prevent and treat the disease."