What Impact Does Hartwell Have On Our Understanding Of The Cell Cycle?

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All organisms consist of cells that multiply through cell division. To produce two identical daughter cells, the DNA in each chromosome must be first duplicated (Phase S) after which the two completely identical copies must be accurately segregated to the two daughter cells. (Phase M) These essential steps of life are commonly known as the cell cycle and are the basis of the creation and the sustention of all organisms. This Paper will at first briefly explain the experiences Dr. Leland Harrison (Lee) Hartwell did to discover essential facts of the cell cycle. After that, we will discuss about the impact his work has on our today’s understanding of the cell cycle. After receiving his Doctor of Philosophy in Biology from the Massachusetts …show more content…

He decided to use an easy-to-manipulate, single celled eukaryote (organism whose cell contains a nucleus) as model to study the genes. So Hartwell discovered that the baker’s yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae has almost the same CDC genes and the molecular pathways they control as the human. (Highly conserved genes and molecular pathways through evolution). In today’s laboratories, yeast is often used for the study of genes. Probably because they are easy to manipulate genetically, so the genes of the yeast can be easily altered, deleted or replaced. Most importantly they have the ability to proliferate in a haploid state (n). So the yeast expresses only a single copy of each gene present in the cell. But there are many more reasons, why the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is clearly the most ideal eukaryotic microorganism for Harwell’s and other geneticist’s studies, like rapid growth, small genome size, rapid analysis in which phase the yeast cell is…. Nowadays, every year scientists whose research in yeast had brought interesting knowledge in a biological field, is rewarded with the “Lee Hartwell Award”. Hartwell also developed a colony color assay for monitoring centromere DNA-protein interactions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This method is nowadays used by a multitude of scientist to observe DNA-protein interaction in yeast

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