The green alga Coleochaete orbicularisgrows by the outermost cells dividing, starting with a single cell in the centre. Modeling this by repeatedly applying Errera's rule - that is, making cells divide along the smallest plane that can create two daughter cells of equal size - reproduces real algal development.PRECISION GRAPHICS
What can soap bubbles tell us about cell division? More than you might think: in 1886 Leo Errera noted that bubbles in soap resembled dividing cells. He thought the shape of the bubbles could predict where plant cells would divide, and by 1888 he had formulated a rule saying that the cell plate—the structure that splits a dividing plant cell in two—adopts the same area-minimizing geometry as a soap film. Jacques Dumais and Sébastien Besson at Harvard have now done some bubbly experiments of their own, extending Errera’s rule and accounting for exceptions to it.
At cell division, cells assemble complex molecular structures to ensure that chromosomes get separated into different daughter cells as the parent cell splits in two. But how does the molecular ...
