Cells' counting keeps disease away

Researchers think they have provided insight into an age-old mystery in cell biology - can cells count, and if so how?

An international team has unravelled the mystery of how cells count the number of centrosomes, the structure that regulates the cell’s structure and controls the multiplication of cells. It is an important question, since both an excess and absence of centrosomes are associated with disease, from infertility to cancer.

Each cell has, at most, two centrosomes. Whenever a cell divides, each centrosome gives rise to a single daughter centrosome, inherited by one of the daughter cells. By using the fruit fly, researchers at the The Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Portugal, identified the molecule that controls this process in the cell - a molecule called Slimb. In the absence of Slimb, each mother centrosome can give rise to several daughters in one go, leading to an excess in the cell.

Researcher Mónica Bettencourt Dias said: “We carried out these studies in the fruit fly, but we know that the same mechanism acts in mice and even in humans. Knowing that Slimb is altered in several cancers opens up new avenues of research into the mechanisms underlying the change in the number of centrosomes seen in many tumours.”

In recent years, the group has produced several important findings relating to centrosome control. They identified another molecule - SAK - as the trigger for the formation of centrosomes. When SAK is absent, there are no centrosomes, whereas if SAK is overproduced, the cell has too many centrosomes.

The current work is published in the Current Biology, Bettencourt Dias’ group worked with researchers at the universities of Cambridge, UK, and Siena, Italy.