The art of choreographing asymmetric cell division.

Rong Li

Stowers Institute for Medical Research, 1000 East 50th Street, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA. rli@stowers.org

Developmental cell 2013 Jun 10

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Asymmetric cell division (ACD), a mechanism for cell-type diversification in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, is accomplished through highly coordinated cell-fate segregation, genome partitioning, and cell division. Whereas important paradigms have arisen from the study of animal embryonic divisions, the strategies for choreographing the dynamic subprocesses are, in fact, highly varied. This review examines divergent mechanisms of ACD across different kingdoms. Examples discussed show that there is no obligatory hierarchy among the dynamic events and that asymmetry can emerge from each event, but cell polarization more often occurs as the initial instructive process for patterning ACD especially in the multicellular context. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.