Beyond the structural elegance of DNA and the astonishing versatility of protein machines lies a landscape of substantially uncharted dynamic complexity in the architecture of single cells. The aim of this series is to explore the mysteries of cell geometry from questions of scaling and cytoskeletal remodelling that operate at all levels of cellular life, to symmetry breaking and the adhesive interactions that lie at the heart of metazoan development. The unicellular ciliate Stentor, which is the emblem of the series, is the classical example of the complexity of which a single cell is capable, and the principles of whose organization are far from fully understood. Many fundamental questions remain to be answered. How do cells know what size they are? What are the origins of the specialized systems of membrane-bounded compartments that define eukaryotes? What is the influence of cell shape on cell division? What can pathogens tell us about the mechanisms underlying specializations of cellular architecture? What is the essential role of the centrosome? How does the remodelling of cellular architecture lead to the coherent remodelling of tissues in the developing embryo? These and many others are questions to be explored. We welcome research papers that address them.
Gillian Griffiths, Marc Kirschner, Mark Marsh, Sean Munro, Julie Theriot
