It's all about polarity: Researchers discover a mechanism behind asymmetric cell division
The concept of sharing is a basic social principle that most of us are taught from an early age on. In general, we are told to share equally with each other. Sharing is also a concept that applies to cells; they need to share information during cell division to function properly. But in the case of cells, the exchange of information does not always have to be equal. During asymmetric cell division, so-called endosomes, vesicles that store signalling molecules, only go to one daughter cell. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) had discovered this already a few years ago, but they did not know the mechanism behind this unequal sharing. But now the team of Professor Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan was able to shed light on how endosomes know to which cell to go to and how they physically do it.