Asymmetric cell division in plant development / Renze Heidstra -- Asymmetric cell division : how flowering plant cells get their unique identity / R.M. Ranganath -- Symmetric breaking in stem cells of the basal metazoan hydra / Thomas C.G. Bosch -- Asymmetric cell divisions in the early embryo of the leech Helobdella robusta / David A. Weisblat -- Asymmetric division of germline cells / Pierre Fichelson and Jean-René Huynh -- Asymmetric cell division during brain morphogenesis / Takaki Miyata -- Generating asymmetry : with and without self-renewal / Ivana Gaziova and Krishna Moorthi Bhat -- Cell commitment by asymmetric division and immune system involvement / Antonin Bukovsky -- Asymmetric stem cell division in development and cancer / Emmanuel Caussinus and Frank Hirth -- Asymmetric distribution of DNA between daughter cells with final symmetry breaking during aging of human fibroblasts / Alvaro Macieira-Coelho
Summary
Cell biologists have recently become aware that the asymmetry of cell division is an important regulatory phenomenon in the fate of a cell. During development, cell diversity originates through asymmetry; in the adult organism asymmetric divisions regulate the stem cell reservoir and are a source of the drift that contributes to the aging of organisms with renewable cell compartments. Because of the concept of semi-conservative DNA synthesis, it was thought that the distribution of DNA between daughter cells was symmetric. The analysis of the phenomenon in cells during mitosis, however, reveal
