Divisional Strategy

What am I looking at?  

These are images of a cell during an early stage of cell division. The orange/yellow blob at the center is the DNA starting to condense into chromosomes (1). The white lines surrounding the condensing DNA are microtubules (2).

Biology in the background  

Cell division is the process of a single cell turning into two copies of itself. To do this, the original cell needs to make copies of all its cellular components, including its DNA. Once the DNA is copied, it begins to condense so it can be efficiently transferred to each daughter cell. Later in the cell division process, the DNA, in its condensed form as chromosomes, will attach to microtubules and be pulled to opposite ends of the dividing cell before the cell splits.

On the other end of those microtubules are structures called centrosomes, which position themselves at opposite ends of the cell and act as anchors for the microtubules. However, before they get all the way to the opposite ends of the cell, the centrosomes need to start at opposite sides of the nucleus, where the condensing DNA is.

A microtubule is about 25 nanometers in diameter, or roughly 4,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, and a centrosome is about 200 nanometers in diameter, or roughly 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Technique  

 These images were created using fluorescence microscopy.