Cell division: light, motor, genes, more genes...
A complete list of human genes affecting the process of cell division has been compiled
Dmitry Safin, CompulentaBiologists from Europe have compiled a large-scale database in which each human gene encoding proteins corresponds to a video recording of the process of cell division when suppressing the activity of this gene.
The researchers worked with HeLa cells, a popular line derived from cervical cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks. This line is called "immortal" because such cells are capable of dividing an infinite number of times (the moment of the end of HeLa cell division is shown in the illustration by Steve Gschmeissner / Science Photo Library).
Humans are known to have about 21,000 protein-coding genes. The authors suppressed the expression of individual genes using the well-known RNA interference technique and observed for two days how the changes would affect the process of cell division with chromosomes pre-labeled with fluorescent markers. As a result, they registered more than 19 million divisions and created about 190,000 video files.
It is impossible to process such a volume of information manually, and scientists entrusted video sorting to a special computer program that tracked the position of cell nuclei and, assessing their shape, placed each file in one of 16 possible groups. As a result, biologists have identified just under 600 genes that can affect the process of mitosis (nuclear division with the preservation of the number of chromosomes). Most of these genes have never been associated with mitosis before.
Some genes were involved in the early stages of division, and disorders of the functioning of others were manifested in the later stages (at the stage of cytokinesis – division of the cytoplasm). Since the video files were grouped, the authors were able to predict the mitotic functions of the "new" genes involved, for example, in the formation of the division spindle.
The received data is compiled into a database accessible to everyone. "Scientists can go to the website, enter the name of the gene they are interested in and immediately see what happens when its activity is suppressed," says study leader Jan Ellenberg from the European Laboratory of Molecular Biology. – In addition, they are provided with information about genes that give a similar effect. And you don't have to spend months and years in the lab to find out."
Normal cell division:
Division by suppressing the expression of the OGG1 gene.
Daughter cells cannot separate from each other, resulting in the formation of cells with multiple nuclei:
The full version of the report is published in the journal Nature (Beate Neumann et al., Phenotypic profiling of the human genome by time-lapse microscopy reveals cell division genes).
Prepared based on the materials of Nature News (Lights, camera, action for cells).
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