The awe-inspiring process of cell division can turn a fertilized egg into a baby – or a cancerous cell into a malignant tumor. With so much at stake, nature keeps it tightly controlled in a process ...

A peer-reviewed study published in Cell in March 2026 introduces “optovolution,” an in vivo directed-evolution system that uses light to breed proteins capable of switching between active and inactive ...

Scientists have uncovered a surprising new way that giant embryonic cells divide—without relying on the classic “purse-string” ring long thought essential for splitting a cell in two. Studying ...

About 100 cells divide every second in our body. A key protein in cell division is a protein kinase termed Plk1, because it activates other proteins involved in this process. Plk1 is also ...

Before cells can divide, they first need to replicate all of their chromosomes, so that each of the daughter cells can receive a full set of genetic material. Until now, scientists had believed that ...

The story of the cell cycle is often told only through the perspective of the chromosomes as they replicate and then divide. This resource beautifully illustrates the role of the cytoskeleton in that ...

Study finds that large embryo cells divide step by step using a mechanical ratchet system, challenging the textbook idea of a ...

Bacterial cells do not wake up one morning and decide to become parents. But there is a point in their cell cycle—after growing sufficiently and replicating their genomes—when they split in two, ...

Every day, our bodies perform around 330 billion cell divisions to keep us alive and functioning. These divisions rely on the cell cycle, which has been in place since the earliest bacteria. The ...