The Regulation of the Cell Cycle II

Dear Colleagues,

All living organisms on Earth are made up of cells, which are the functional unit of life. Eukaryotic organisms can consist of a single cell (unicellular) or a group of either identical or different cells (multicellular). Biologists have always been fascinated by how a single cell, such as an egg, can give rise to an entire organism, such as the human body, which is composed of billions of cells, including hundreds of different cell types. This is made possible by cell division, whereby a single cell divides to form two cells. During a symmetric cell division, a mother cell produces two daughter cells, whereas an asymmetric cell division results in a mother and a daughter cell that have different fates (different morphologies, cellular compositions, replicative potentials, and/or capacities to differentiate). In biology, the cell cycle refers to the sequence of events that a cell must go through in order to divide. These events, which always occur in the same order, define the different stages of the cell cycle: G1, S, G2, and M. What is fascinating about the cell cycle is its universality, and the main reason for this is that the genetic information of the cell is encoded by exactly the same molecular entity with exactly the same structure: the DNA double helix. Since both daughter cells always inherit their genetic information from their parent cell, the underlying fundamentals of the cell cycle—DNA replication and chromosome segregation—are shared by all organisms. The 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to Sir Paul Nurse, Sir Tim Hunt and Dr. Lee Hartwell, recognized the discovery of the two fundamental principles of cell cycle progression.

The current challenges now seem to lie in our comprehension of the division of the variety of different cells in complex multicellular organisms: How do stem cells divide? What are the differences in the regulation of the cell cycle in germ, embryonic, and somatic cells? How do cells divide in an epithelium to preserve the barrier? How is the division of cells controlled to maintain organ size? How does a cell escape cell cycle controls to become cancerous?

This second Special Issue of the journal Cells, “The Regulation of the Cell Cycle II” aims to familiarize readers with the new aspects of the cell cycle beyond the basic principles. It will collect from leading cell cycle specialists answers to the most pressing issues related to current investigations in multicellular organisms and the cell cycle’s link to human pathologies in particular cancers.

Questions we seek to answer include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Beyond kinases, what is the role of phosphatases?
2. How many checkpoints are there?
3. What are the functions of the centrosome and cilia?
4. What is the connection between the cell cycle and cancer?
5. What are the functions of cytokinesis, abscission, and midbody?
6. Is there cell division in epithelia?
7. What is the connection between the cell cycle and evolution?
8. How can we explain asymmetric cell division?
9. What is the connection between cell division and organ size?

Prof. Dr. Rustem E. Uzbekov
Dr. Claude Prigent
Guest Editors

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• cell cycle
• interphase
• mitosis
• CDK/cyclin
• checkpoint
• S-phase
• DNA replication
• centrosome duplication
• cytokinesis
• cancer