The Mayo team, already known for discovering several families of dynamins, this time discovered them -- not on a membrane, as expected -- but on the unlikely centrosome which has no membrane. It was the last place they expected to find them, but the surprise finding offers a new lead in the fight against cancer.

"These findings provide us with a basic understanding of how normal and cancer cells are organized; how they divide and how they might grow and die -- which is an important part of cancer," says Mark McNiven, Ph.D., the cell biologist who led the Mayo Clinic research team's investigation. "A lot of cancers, you could argue, don't grow faster; they just don't die. So this discovery will improve our understanding of this very relevant cellular process. It promotes understanding the cell at its most basic level, giving us a new layer of detail."

The research is featured in the April issue of Nature Cell Biology (http://www.nature.com/ncb/). The journal's editor, Dr. Bernd Pulverer, noted the Mayo results as a novel insight into how cells work. "The Mayo Clinic group has discovered a rather unexpected and surprising connection ... While it remains unclear how exactly Dynamin-2 functions at the centrosome, it clearly localizes to this important structure and it is critical to maintaining an intact centrosome structure. We will follow with great interest further insights into how Dynamin-2 functions in this context, and if this connection serves to integrate signals from the cell surface and membrane trafficking with cell division."

Significance of the Mayo Clinic Discovery

The newly described relationship betwee
'"/>


19-Apr-2004