Premium
The coordination of cell growth and division — intentional or Incidental?
Author(s) -
Tyson John J.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/bies.950020208
Subject(s) - cell division , division (mathematics) , biology , dna synthesis , cell cycle , dna replication , exponential growth , mechanism (biology) , cell , cell growth , microbiology and biotechnology , dna , genetics , computational biology , mathematics , arithmetic , physics , mathematical analysis , quantum mechanics
During balanced growth of cells in culture all extensive properties of the culture — e.g. cell number, total mass, total DNA content — increase exponentially at the same specific growth rate. Therefore, in some average sense, each component of a cell must double between birth and division. For DNA there exists an elaborate mechanism to ensure precise replication of the genetic material and accurate partitioning of identical copies of the genome to the two daughter cells. Do cells possess another mechanism that intentionally relates the timing of cell division to overall increase in cell size, or is the coordination of growth and division an incidental consequence of size‐independent rules for progress through the cell cycle?.