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June 22, 2007
Get out your textbooks. It's time to rewrite another chapter in cell biology. Scientists have discovered another lane on the cellular information super highway. The cellular information superhighway is composed of globs of proteins known as microtubules. Up until now scientists thought that microtubules originated from a structure near the cell's nucleus, the centrosome. Now it appears that another one of the cell's organs, often referred to as organelles, the Golgi apparatus, is the source of some of the cell's microtubules.
"The Golgi apparatus is very close to the centrosome," says Irina Kaverina, an author on the paper and a researcher at Vanderbilt University. Kaverina and her colleagues used a microscope and carefully followed the microtubules all the way back to their source. Their results, says Kaverina show that both the centrosome and the Golgi make microtubules.
Because microtubles play an important role in cell division and migration they are affected by cancer drugs such as colchicine and paclitaxel. What implications this discovery has for cancer research remains unclear. But one thing is for sure, further study of this new set of microtubules might lead to insight into how invasive cancer cells might be stopped.
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