From a home-made laboratory to the Nobel Prize: an interview with Rita Levi Montalcini

Overview

The nucleolus is the most prominent substructure of the nucleus. When it was first discovered, it was considered to be an isolated organelle that forms fibrils and granules. In 1931, the relationship between the nucleolus and chromosomes was first described by Heitz. He observed that the appearance and size of nucleolus varies depending on the stage of the cell cycle. He also noticed constricted regions on different chromosomes clustered together at definite cell cycle stages. These regions,...

Replicative cell senescence is a property of cells that allows them to divide a finite number of times throughout the organism's lifespan while preventing excessive proliferation. Replicative senescence is associated with the gradual loss of the telomere — short, repetitive DNA sequences found at the end of the chromosomes. Telomeres are bound by a group of proteins to form a protective cap on the ends of chromosomes. Embryonic stem cells express telomerase — an enzyme that adds the telomeric...

Rous Sarcoma virus or RSV was discovered by F. Peyton Rous in the year 1911 as a filterable transmissible agent that could cause tumors in chickens. He won a Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1966. His experiments clearly demonstrated that some cancers could be caused by infectious agents and led to the discovery of many more cancer-causing viruses in animals as well as humans.
RSV is a retrovirus that contains two copies of a plus-strand  RNA genome. Its genome consists of four main open...

Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is the genetic material responsible for passing traits from generation to generation in all organisms and most viruses. DNA is composed of two strands of nucleotides that wind around each other to form a spring-like structure called a double helix. However, the double helix is not perfectly symmetrical. Instead, there are regularly occurring grooves in the structure. The major groove occurs where the sugar-phosphate backbones are relatively far apart. This space...

Nuclear reprogramming is the process of switching gene expression of one cell type to that of another cell type, usually from a differentiated cell state to an undifferentiated cell state. Differentiation occurs during processes such as development and morphogenesis, tissue regeneration, and malignancy. Cells can also be artificially induced to reprogram their gene expression by techniques such as nuclear transfer, induced pluripotency, and cell fusion. Such techniques have many applications in...