Cell Cycle & Proliferation

Cell growth & division

highly regulated mechanisms

Cell growth and cell division are highly regulated basic mechanisms which play essential roles in cell cycle and cell proliferation. While the cell cycle defines the process by which a cell divides in two daughter cells, cell proliferation describes the major mechanism of tissue development and regeneration.

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Cell Cycle

the four main phases of cell growth and division

The cell cycle is the fundamental process of cell growth and division. It can be divided into four main phases: G1 in which the cell grows and prepares for DNA synthesis, S phase for DNA synthesis, G2 in which the cell grows and prepares for mitosis and finally M phase in which mitosis and cytokinesis take place for an equal division of chromosomes, membranes, cytoplasm and organelles. By this process a daughter cell emerges.
The progression from on phase to the next is strictly regulated by cell cycle checkpoints to ensure a proper replication and division. Key regulators are cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) building heterodimers in which cyclins display the regulatory subunits and CDKs the catalytic subunit.
Besides those checkpoints, cell cycle inhibitors are essential to prevent tumor formation by arresting the cell in G1 phase. Those tumor suppressors include p16 and p21, which is activated by p53.
The regulation of the cell cycle is extremely important because dysregulation can lead to uncontrolled proliferation and therefore cancer onset. PROGEN enables and improves research in this area by providing high quality antibodies specific against a variety of cell cycle proteins like checkpoint proteins (anti-CDK4 and anti-CDK6) and tumor suppressors (anti-p16, anti-p21, anti-p53).

Proliferation

a rapid mechanism of tissue growth

Proliferation defines the exponential increase in the number of cells within a tissue and requires simultaneous cell growth and division. Since both, cell growth and cell division can occure independent from each other to either produce a single larger cells or many progressively smaller cells, cell proliferation is not synonymous with either of the two.

Stem cells usually undergo proliferation followed by differentiation to generate or regenerate tissue either during development or after damage or cancer.

Proliferation depends on a balanced rate of cell growth and division to maintain a constant cell size during the exponential increase of the cell number. However, proliferation strongly depends on the availability of nutrients and is tightly controlled by gene regulatory networks. The normal cell proliferation and the pathologic consequences occurring if the system malfunctions are critical to many areas of medicine, from embryogenesis, to tissue repair up to oncogenesis. In contrast to normal cells, cancer cells own an excessive cell proliferation because they increase proliferative signal transmission and avoid growth suppressor. The main reason for excessive cell proliferation and tumor development are modified transcription factors, which act as key regulators for cell cycle-dependent proliferation. Some of these transcription factors such as p53, CDK4, Cyclin d1 are easily detectable and are of great importance as tumor markers in diagnostics and cancer research.