The Fox Lab at Duke University

Division of polyploid cells often leads to cell division errors.  We and others contributed to the finding that this is true non only in disease or cases of "accidental polyploidy," but also in normally developing tissues. 

 

A major question going forward is how such cell division errors and their consequences may be tolerated in non-diseased tissues, and whether such errors may actually serve a functional purpose in these tissues. Thus, in addition to relating our findings to polyploidy in disease, we will also uncover new functions/regulation of building a functional organ through error-prone polyploid cell division.