12/07/2025
Cells Don’t Always Divide the Way You Were Taught in School
A groundbreaking study from The University of Manchester has overturned a 100-year-old assumption about how cells divide. Traditionally, students learn that a parent cell rounds into a sphere before splitting into two identical daughter cells. But real-time imaging of living zebrafish embryos has now shown that this isn’t always the case.
Researchers discovered that in many natural scenarios, dividing cells do not become round. Instead, the original shape of the cell before division determines how the cell will split. Wider, shorter cells tend to round and divide symmetrically. In contrast, longer, thinner cells don’t round up and undergo asymmetric division—producing daughter cells that differ in both size and function.
This process, once thought to be limited to rare stem cell behavior, may be widespread across developing tissues, including blood vessels. Importantly, it could help explain how complex tissues form—and how diseases like cancer spread.
Researchers also used a precise laser micropatterning technique to manipulate cell shape in human cells, confirming that shape alone influences how cells divide.
This discovery may change how biology is taught and opens new possibilities in regenerative medicine by allowing scientists to guide cell function simply by adjusting cell shape.
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Research Paper 📄
Holly E. Lovegrove et al, "Interphase cell morphology defines the mode, symmetry, and outcome of mitosis," Science (2025).
