Watching molecular machines at work

When one cell divides into two, the newly born daughter cells have to be equipped with everything they will need in their tiny lives. Most important of all is that they inherit a complete copy of the genetic information from their mother cell. If this is not the case because a wrong number of chromosomes gets passed on during cell division, the daughter cells will often not survive, or worse, contribute to the development of diseases such as cancer or other conditions. Segregating chromosomes co