• How does a bacterium pack a 1.5 millimeters long circular chromosome into a cylindrical container of just 2 micrometers long and 1 micrometer wide?

    This is a question that has occupied microbiologists for decades, but like many questions surrounding chromosomes it is difficult to tackle experimentally because of the small size of the bacterium …

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  • A microtubule-based molecular switch determines the orientation of cell divison in plant stem cells

    In order to create an organ like the plant root from a single niche of pluripotent cells, plants must control the orientation of the division plane. If all divisions were transverse …

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  • Jeroen van Zon starts new research group on ‘Quantitative Developmental Biology’

    As of March 1st, Jeroen van Zon has been appointed group leader within the Systems Biophysics department at AMOLF. His ‘Quantitative Developmental Biology’ research group will use a quantitative, physics-inspired approach …

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