Microscopy used in cell division project

A six-year study that used microscopy to examine genetic cell division has now been published.

Findings from the MitoCheck project, coordinated by the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, were outlined in the Science and Nature journals.

According to IMP, a facility founded in 1988, the process of cell division has "puzzled biologists for the past 150 years" and the work of researchers led by Jan-Michael Peters has come closer to solving the riddle.

Experts had to inactivate more than 22,000 genes in cultured cells in order to discover which ones were important for this process.

Video microscopy was then utilised to make movies of the samples to see whether powering down the individual organism units affected division.

"Our database is going to be an important source of information for many areas of biomedical research," Dr Peters suggested, adding that cooperation between international departments enabled the venture to be a success.