In cell biology, Meiomitosis is an aberrant cellular division pathway that combines normal mitosis pathways with ectopically expressed

meiotic Meiosis (; , since it is a reductional division) is a special type of cell division of germ cells in sexually-reproducing organisms that produces the gametes, such as sperm or egg cells. It involves two rounds of division that ultimately res ...

machinery resulting in genomic instability.

Description

Meiotic pathways are normally restricted to

germ cells Germ or germs may refer to: Science * Germ (microorganism), an informal word for a pathogen * Germ cell, cell that gives rise to the gametes of an organism that reproduces sexually * Germ layer, a primary layer of cells that forms during embryo ...

. Meiotic proteins drive double stranded DNA breaks, chiasma formation,

sister chromatid A sister chromatid refers to the identical copies (chromatids) formed by the DNA replication of a chromosome, with both copies joined together by a common centromere. In other words, a sister chromatid may also be said to be 'one-half' of the dup ...

adhesion and rearrange the

spindle apparatus In cell biology, the spindle apparatus refers to the cytoskeletal structure of eukaryotic cells that forms during cell division to separate sister chromatids between daughter cells. It is referred to as the mitotic spindle during mitosis, a p ...

. During meiosis, there are 2 sets of cell divisions, the second division is similar to mitosis in that sister chromatids are directly separated. However, in the first meiotic division the sister chromatids are held together by cohesins and segregated from their homologous pair of cohesion bound sister chromatids after resolution of recombination crossover points (chiasma) between the homologous pairs. The collision of mitosis and meiosis (first division) pathways could cause abnormal chiasma formation, abnormal cohesion expression, and mitotic/meiotic spindle defects that could result in insertions, deletions, abnormal segregation, DNA bridging, and potentially failure of cell division altogether resulting in

polyploidy Polyploidy is a condition in which the biological cell, cells of an organism have more than one pair of (Homologous chromosome, homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have Cell nucleus, nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they ha ...

Role in cancer

Meiotic proteins have been noted to be expressed in

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

particularly melanoma and

lymphoma Lymphoma is a group of blood and lymph tumors that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). In current usage the name usually refers to just the cancerous versions rather than all such tumours. Signs and symptoms may include enla ...

. In cutaneous

T-cell lymphoma T-cell lymphoma is a rare form of cancerous lymphoma affecting T-cells. Lymphoma arises mainly from the uncontrolled proliferation of T-cells and can become cancerous. T-cell lymphoma is categorized under Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and represents ...

meiosis proteins have been shown to be regulated with the cell cycle. Lymphoma cell lines have also been noted to up-regulate meiosis specific genes with

irradiation Irradiation is the process by which an object is exposed to radiation. The exposure can originate from various sources, including natural sources. Most frequently the term refers to ionizing radiation, and to a level of radiation that will serve ...

and a correlation with mitotic arrest and

has been noted. The overall role of meiomitosis in cancer development and evolution has yet to be determined.

References

Sources

* * Cell cycle {{cell-cycle-stub