![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.lablit.com\/images\/Mitosis.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI should be above aesthetics at this stage of the game. After all, am I not a hardened professional scientist, squinting heroically into the winds of the unknown?<\/p>\n
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\nHeartbreaker:<\/strong> mammalian cell division<\/p>\n \nBut bravado unravels in the face of truly beautiful data. And I don’t mean ‘beautiful’ in the euphemistic sense that Nature<\/em> authors use when they are trying to explain why their latest result both kicks butt and will cure cancer. I mean ‘beautiful’ as in the sort of image that catches your breath.<\/p>\n \nAt the moment, I’m playing with a new human cell line kindly provided by a collaborator. It expresses histone fused to monomeric Cherry and alpha-tubulin fused to eGFP, and I’m filming these cells as I inhibit various genes with RNA interference. I’m supposed to be looking for cell shape and cytoskeletal defect phenotypes, but I keep getting distracted by mitosis because it’s so damned beautiful. The cells round up, their cherry DNA hearts beginning to glow like molten lava. Then the chromosomes muster out of nowhere and line up in a scraggly red row, the livid green spindle jostling them into place like fingers. Then whoosh<\/em> \u2013 apart go the fingers, the heart is broken into two and the greenness goes diffuse and pinches apart. The lava cools and the two daughter cells form around them, fading back into the blackness.<\/p>\n \nMy brain, knowing an interesting thing when it sees it, keeps forcing my eyes to zero in on the mitotic events instead of keeping watch on their flat, unassuming interphase colleagues. It’s like being told not<\/em> to think of ten bald men. <\/p>\n \n(p.s. I haven’t made stills from my movies yet, so the above image was donated by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. Cheers, mate!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I should be above aesthetics at this stage of the game. After all, am I not a hardened professional scientist, squinting heroically into the winds of the unknown? Heartbreaker: mammalian cell division But bravado unravels in the face of truly … Continue reading