“It’s the first time we can study ongoing cell division without the cell membrane, and that means we can physically manipulate things,” says Telley, “so we can uncover the physical forces involved, and see what are the constraints.”
The new technique is described in detail today in Nature Protocols, and has already led Telley and colleagues to a surprising discovery. They found that, although successive divisions fill the embryo with more and more material, leaving less and less space for each spindle, and spindles become smaller as the embryo develops, simply squeezing the ‘cell’ into tighter quarters doesn’t make it produce a smaller spindle.
Combined with the genetic manipulation approaches commonly used in fruit fly studies, the scientists believe their new technique will help to unravel this and other mysteries of how a cell becomes two.
In a nutshell:
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New technique allows scientists to study cell division without cell membrane
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Advantages: can physically
constrain and manipulate; can access nuclei normally buried deep in
opaque embryo; combinable with wide-ranging fruit fly genetics
techniques
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Revealed that, surprisingly, confined space not enough to restrict spindle size
