{"id":25146,"date":"2013-01-17T14:17:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T13:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/?p=25146"},"modified":"2024-03-26T00:33:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T23:33:33","slug":"the-cell-that-isnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/the-cell-that-isnt\/","title":{"rendered":"The cell that isn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

In a nutshell:<\/h3>\n

– New technique allows scientists to study cell division without cell membrane
– Advantages: can physically constrain and manipulate; can access nuclei normally buried deep in opaque embryo; combinable with wide-ranging fruit fly genetics techniques
– Revealed that, surprisingly, confined space not enough to restrict spindle size<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This may look like yet another video of a dividing cell, but there\u2019s a catch. You\u00a0are\u00a0looking at chromosomes (red) being pulled apart by the mitotic spindle (green), but it\u2019s not a cell, because there\u2019s no cell membrane. Like a child sucking an egg out of its shell,\u00a0Ivo Telley\u00a0from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, removed these cellular \u2018innards\u2019 from a fruit fly embryo, at a stage when it is essentially a sac full of membrane-less \u2018cells\u2019 that divide and divide without building physical barriers to separate themselves from each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first time we can study ongoing cell division without the cell membrane, and that means we can physically manipulate things,\u201d says Telley, \u201cso we can uncover the physical forces involved, and see what are the constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new technique is described in detail today in Nature Protocols<\/em>, and has already led Telley and colleagues to a surprising discovery. They found that, although successive divisions fill the embryo with more and more material, leaving less and less space for each spindle, and spindles become smaller as the embryo develops, simply squeezing the \u2018cell\u2019 into tighter quarters doesn\u2019t make it produce a smaller spindle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combined with the genetic manipulation approaches commonly used in fruit fly studies, the scientists believe their new technique will help to unravel this and other mysteries of how a cell becomes two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work, which started in Thomas Surrey\u2019s lab at EMBL, was carried out by Telley and Imre G\u00e1sp\u00e1r in Anne Ephrussi\u2019s lab at EMBL. Surrey is now at Cancer Research UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video is also available on the EMBL YouTube channel.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This may look like yet another video of a dividing cell, but there\u2019s a catch. You\u00a0are\u00a0looking at chromosomes (red) being pulled apart by the mitotic spindle (green), but it\u2019s not a cell, because there\u2019s no cell membrane. Like a child sucking an egg out of its shell,\u00a0Ivo Telley\u00a0from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17591],"tags":[979,833,666],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-25146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-science-technology","tag-cell-membrane","tag-fruit-fly","tag-spindle"],"acf":{"show_featured_image":false,"vf_locked":false,"featured":false,"article_intro":"

New technique captures division of membrane-less cells<\/p>\n","article_sources":[{"source_description":"

A single Drosophila embryo extract for the study of mitosis ex vivo. Telley, I.A., G\u00e1sp\u00e1r, I., Ephrussi, A. & Surrey, T. – Nature Protocols<\/em>, Advanced online publication on 17 January 2013 \u2013 DOI: 10.1038\/nprot.2013.003<\/p>\n","source_link_url":"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nprot\/journal\/v8\/n2\/full\/nprot.2013.003.html"}],"related_links":[{"link_description":"More information on the Ephrussi group where Ivo Telley works","link_url":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/groups\/ephrussi\/"},{"link_description":"More information on the same topic: article by Ivo in JCB (June 2012) ","link_url":"https:\/\/rupress.org\/jcb\/article\/197\/7\/887\/36896\/Aster-migration-determines-the-length-scale-of"}],"in_this_article":false,"color":"#007B53","youtube_url":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7krCUBuHvpw","mp4_url":"","video_caption":"Credit: Ivo Telley - EMBL","press_contact":"EMBL Generic","field_target_display":"embl","source_article":false},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe cell that isn\u2019t | EMBL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/science\/the-cell-that-isnt\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The cell that isn\u2019t | EMBL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This may look like yet another video of a dividing cell, but there\u2019s a catch. 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