A study on cell migration provides insights into the movement of cancer cells
Thursday, November 21, 2013 - 19:00
in Biology & Nature
This image shows trachea development in the Drosophila fly; the leading cell (Green) is dragging the group of six cells (red). Jordi Casanova, head of the "Morphogenesis in Drosophila" lab at IRB Barcelona and CSIC research professor, and Gaëlle Lebreton, postdoctoral fellow in the same group, have published a study performed using Drosophila melanogaster in the Journal of Cell Science. This work reveals that in a multiple movement, a single cell can act as the leader and can drag the rest with it. The scientists have studied the tracheal development of Drosophila in vivo and describe the morphological characteristics of the leading cell and provide molecular details about how it drives the movement.