The Journal of Biology article "Differences in the way mammalian cells and yeast cells coordinate cell growth and cell-cycle progression" by Ian Conlon and Martin Ruff can be interpreted as the classic comparison of plants cells and animals cells between the way that they grow and replicate. The type of animals cells chosen to experiment on was the rat Schwann cells and for the plant, yeast cells.
Within the article, it was concluded that the Schwann cells and the yeast cells use different mechanisms to coordinate their growth with cell-cycle progression. The yeast cells use cell-check points in the G1 and/or G2 phases where the cell pauses and adjusts until the cell is adequate to move on to the S Phase or M Phase. Yet, the animal cells apparently use extracellular signals to coordinate their growth with cell-cycle progression, which is not elaborated on.
Beside the different mechanisms used in the cells, there are many more factual results included in the article. As the Schwann cells were tested it was found that they maintain a constant average size with repeating passaging , this its cell growth is independent of the cell size, its rate of growth is limited by extracellular growth factors, that its cell changes size only slowly when shifted to a richer growth medium, and that competition for extracellular factors can apparently influence cell size. A point was also made that most mammalian cells grow linearly, which is what makes them independent of their size.
As a reader of this article, I found it slightly unorganized compared to the few other research articles I have read. The content didn't flow too well, it just came and went on to something else. However, I choose this article because we just finished studying a chapter on the cell-cycle which made it easy for me to follow and understand the material discussed in this article. Plus, I had already known about the articles main idea of cell-check points.
