Man, I love it when scientists discover and publish things on a schedule that matches my state-mandated curriculum! It really makes my job a lot easier. (Also, the joke in the title line is a super-lame joke that my students tend to make when we get to the unit...they think they are quite the comedians.)
OK, so maybe that's not entirely true, but...this article was so timely, it made me very happy (also, bonus- pretty fluorescent cell pictures!). In my Biology classes, we have been studying mitosis, aka cell division. It's sometimes difficult, but also interesting, to teach a subject and be able to say, "we know A, B, and C....but we're not sure about D and we don't even know why E exists." For example, the last I heard was that plant cells don't have centrioles, and we know that in animal cells, centrioles are the organizing centers for spindle fibers...so how do plants do it? It's those kinds of contradictions that make teaching science interesting, and challenging. [*note: I had better do a quick Google search to make sure that they haven't figured out that centriole thing yet...] [*OK, so...the internets tell me that centrioles DO organize microtubules for cell division, however- interestingly enough, cells that have had their microtubules removed still undergo mitosis, except the cell division is a little asymmetrical.] Gotta love the information superhighway....back in the old days I would have had to crack open a book to find that out, or god forbid, leave the house and go to the actual library.
