Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) join forces with top scientists from eleven research institutes in Austria, Germany, Italy, France and the United Kingdom for “MitoCheck” – the largest integrated research project on cell cycle control within the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme (FP6).
The partners will receive an 8.5 million Euro grant to address a fundamental question: How is cell division regulated?
Cell division (or “mitosis”) is one of the key processes of life. Mistakes during mitosis can cause infertility and mental retardation, and can contribute to cancer. For the most part, mitosis is still poorly understood. Scientists do know that protein kinases – a certain type of enzyme – play a key role, but researchers don’t know how these enzymes bring about the important changes in cells that cause them to divide. To understand cell division in a comprehensive manner, the MitoCheck consortium of European scientists will systematically hunt for all genes that are required for division and then check the products of these genes to see how they are regulated by mitotic kinases.
“This project is vital to understanding one of the most basic processes of life - making two cells out of one. Here at EMBL, we will identify which genes are required for mitosis by suppressing them gene-by-gene in live human cells and testing whether they can still divide afterwards,” notes Jan Ellenberg, EMBL Group Leader and co-initiator of the MitoCheck project.