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Cancer genetics

History rings true for the dividing cell

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 6, page 879 (2005)Cite this article

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The German biologist Theodor Boveri proposed that the chromosome imbalances that are typical of cancer cells arise because the failure of a cell to divide during mitosis would lead to tetraploid cells; these in turn would be vulnerable to complications during cell division and therefore produce daughter cells that have an abnormal number of chromosomes. Two studies have experimentally shown this to be the case and have provided some mechanistic details.

David Pellman and colleagues chemically blocked cell division in mouse mammary epithelial cells that lacked the tumour suppressor gene p53, and showed that the resulting tetraploid cells were more likely to generate cancers in mice and to have unstable genomes.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPERS

  1. Shi, Q. & King, R. W. Chromosome nondisjunction yields tetraploid rather than aneuploid cells in human cell lines. Nature 437, 1038–1042 (2005)

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  2. Fujiwara, T. et al. Cytokinesis failure generating tetraploids promotes tumorigenesis in p53-null cells. Nature 437, 1043–1047 (2005)

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Authors
  1. Tanita Casci
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Casci, T. History rings true for the dividing cell. Nat Rev Genet 6, 879 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1760

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