Study title and authors:
Cholesterol is essential for mitosis progression and its deficiency induces polyploid cell formation
Carlos Fernández, María del Val T. Lobo, c, Diego Gómez-Coronado and Miguel A. Lasunción, d,
Servicio de Bioquímica-Investigación, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain
This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15383319
Fernández notes that cholesterol is an essential component of cell membranes.
Mitosis is a process of cell division which results in the production of two daughter cells from a single parent cell. The daughter cells are identical to one another and to the original parent cell. Mitosis plays a role in cell replacement and wound healing. Cytokinesis is the final stage of mitosis where a single parent cell forms the two new cells.
The aim of the study was to determine the role of cholesterol in mitosis. For this human cells were incubated in a cholesterol free medium and the results observed were:
(a) Prolonged cholesterol starvation inhibitied cytokinesis and caused the formation of polyploid cells, which were multinucleated (cells which have more than one nucleus per cell and are implicated in tumour formation) and had other abnormalities.
(b) Supplementing with cholesterol completely abolished these adverse effects
, demonstrating they were specifically due to cholesterol deficiency.Polyploid cells are implicated in cancer, Alzheimer's disease and ataxia telangiectasia (Ataxia-telangiectasia is rare childhood disease that affects the brain and other parts of the body such as uncoordinated movements and retarded mental ability)
Fernández concluded: "Cholesterol is essential for mitosis completion and that, in the absence of cholesterol, the cells fail to undergo cytokinesis... generating polyploid cells".
