Getting Into and Out of Mitosis

Mitosis has retained its fascination ever since the first beautiful pictures drawn by Walther Flemming in the late 19th Century. Now, with modern molecular and cell biological tools, equally beautiful pictures are being created as the molecular mechanisms underlying mitosis are elucidated. As our understanding of the molecular machinery of the division apparatus expands, there has been a dramatic resurgence of interest in understanding how cells take the initial decision to commit to division and then exit mitosis once division is complete. The emerging picture is one of sophisticated interplay between protein kinases, protein phosphatases and ubiquitin ligases in both time and space. Big, important questions have emerged that cannot be answered without integrating knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines.

The aim of this Workshop was to draw together researchers tackling the problems of getting into and out of mitosis in different systems and with different approaches – biochemical, cell biological and computational. The Workshop brought together researchers who tackle this problem with a variety of approaches in a friendly and interactive setting to address the fundamental questions that are posed by the whole process of mitosis, from what is the initial trigger, to how the cell ensures that chromosomes are correctly segregated, to how cells coordinate reentry to the next cell cycle.