Tinkering with Acellular Division

摘要

One way to understand a complex biological process is to reconstitute it from purified components. Among many notable successes are the initiation of bacterial DNA replication, protein secretion in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, and assembly of the mitotic spindle that segregates chromosomes during eukaryotic cell division. For many other complex processes, reconstitution seems feasible, but for cytokinesis-the last stage of cell division in which the cytoplasm is divided to produce two daughter cells-this seems a formidable task. One might assume that a cell would be necessary to reconstitute such a phenomenon. However, two papers in this issue-by Osawa et al. on page 792 (1) and by Loose et al. on page 789 (2)-indicate that bacterial cytokinesis may be achievable in a cell-free system.