Chapter 18 Overview

Self-reproduction is perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of cells-as may be said for all living organisms. All cells reproduce by dividing in two, with each parental cell giving rise to two daughter cells on completion of each cycle of cell division. These newly formed daughter cells can themselves grow and divide, giving rise to a new cell population formed by the growth and division of a single parental cell and its progeny. In the simplest case, such cycles of growth and division allow a single bacterium to form a colony consisting of millions of progeny cells during overnight incubation on a plate of nutrient agar medium. In a more complex case, repeated cycles of cell growth and division result in the development of a single fertilized egg into the approximately 1014 cells that make up the human body.

The division of all cells must be carefully regulated and coordinated with both cell growth and DNA replication in order to ensure the formation of progeny cells containing intact genomes. In eukaryotic cells, progression through the cell cycle is controlled by a series of protein kinases that have been conserved from yeasts to mammals. In higher eukaryotes, this cell cycle machinery is itself regulated by the growth factors that control cell proliferation, allowing the division of individual cells to be coordinated with the needs of the organism as a whole. Not surprisingly, defects in cell cycle regulation are a common cause of the abnormal proliferation of cancer cells, so studies of the cell cycle and cancer have become closely interconnected, similar to the relationship between studies of cancer and the cell signaling pathways discussed in Chapter 17.