Thumbnails:
List:
Year:
Category:
Session:
Poster:
Getting poster data...
Beata Edyta Mierzwa (University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA; Beata Science Art, San Diego, USA)
This drawing shows a signaling circuit that regulates mitotic entry in fission yeast - an homage to Sir Paul Nurse's pioneering work on the cell cycle. The cell cycle is a crucial process that governs cell growth and division. The transitions between each stage in the cell cycle need to be tightly regulated to ensure correct timing of each process. One of the most fascinating transitions is the entry into mitosis to allow the cell to divide. At the heart of this lies a fascinating signaling circuit involving a protein complex (Cdc2/CDK1-Cyclin B) that integrates both positive (Cdc25) and negative signals (Wee1 & Mik1/Myt1) to decide when to enter mitosis. A very common metaphor to describe these cellular signaling pathways is an electronic circuit board wired to transmit information and trigger specific actions – in this case summing up the positive and negative input signals and transmitting them to the output, which determines entry into mitosis. Bonus info – the circuitry shown in the center of the cell is based on a realistic schematic that would be functional when built!