Prof. Sharad Bhartiya Research Group IIT Bombay

Cell cycle regulation of S.Pombe

Cell cycle regulation of S.Pombe (Prof. K. V. Venkatesh)

Growth and division of cells are highly integrated and regulated through cell signaling. The period between each cell division along with mitosis (cell division) is known as a ‘cell cycle’. Cell cycle events are governed by highly integrated signaling pathways and existence of several natural checkpoint mechanisms represents the level of regulation adopted by individual cells. Uncontrolled/Irregular cell cycle events play an important role in the development of genotoxic diseases such as cancer. Behavior of a cell is reflection of its environmental conditions which are interconnected in cell cycle regulatory pathway. The mechanism of cell cycle regulation is found conserved in all eukaryotes. The molecular mechanism of cell cycle regulatory network includes enzyme mediated phosphorylation-dephosphorylation cycles, protein-protein interactions, protein- DNA interactions, as well as external signals. Existence of several multiple feedback and feed forward loops for controlling the cell cycle events have been identified in literature. Furthermore, the activation/inactivation of these loops are also driven by other signaling pathways. But how these interactions contribute in maintaining the cell physiology is unclear. System level study of these networks will reveal the coordinated regulatory mechanisms adopted by the cell for different environmental conditions and unexpected stimuli. Our current work involves analysis of such regulatory networks in yeast by the application of mathematical modeling as a tool.