Editorial
Milestones in Cytoskeleton
Nature Milestones are special supplements that aim to highlight remarkable achievements in a particular field. Here we present Milestones in Cytoskeleton, which covers key discoveries made over the past 60 years. Cytoskeletal research has provided valuable insights in areas — as diverse as nanotechnology and developmental biology — that are rapidly advancing and so we believe it is the perfect time to look back at the discoveries that have shaped the field.
From muscle to brain, and from proliferation to morphogenesis, the three filament networks — actin, microtubules and intermediate filaments — that constitute the cytoskeleton give cells their shape. This is a field that has been attractive to physicists and chemists alike, who joined forces with biologists early on. Given its nature, the cytoskeleton field has participated in the development of several microscopy techniques now adopted by the broader cell biology community.
Most people are familiar with the mechanism of sliding actin filaments, which drives muscle contraction. Many may even know that the 'organ' of cell division discovered more than a 100 years ago, the centrosome, was later recognized as the main microtubule-organizing centre in animal cells. But how did the field evolve from the original observations made using basic microscopy and biochemistry tools to the development of elegant imaging technologies and our current understanding of the mechanisms that regulate filament polymerization and that coordinate processes as varied as cell division, migration and polarity? Our hope is that these Milestone articles will guide the reader through these seminal advances.
Milestones in Cytoskeleton is a collaborative effort between three Nature Publishing Group journals: Nature Cell Biology, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology and Nature. The Milestones were chosen in collaboration with a panel of 29 advisors. The list of Milestones is far from exhaustive but aims to present selected studies that provided major breakthroughs that had a broad impact. Each Milestone is covered in a short article, written by editors from Nature Publishing Group, and discusses how the advance was received by the community at the time as well as its impact on subsequent research.
In addition to the Milestone articles, the supplement includes a Timeline, which provides a chronology of key events, and a collection of selected Reviews from the participating journals. The Milestones website includes additional features, such as biographies of the advisors and a library of relevant content from Nature Publishing Group journals. The content of the supplement and a selection of articles from the library are free to download online from http://www.nature.com/milestones/cytoskeleton/. As always, Nature Publishing Group takes complete responsibility for the choice of Milestones and content of the supplement.
- Ekat Kritikou, Senior Editor, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology
- Nathalie Le Bot, Associate Editor, Nature Cell Biology
- Deepa Nath, Senior Editor, Nature
- Alison Schuldt, Senior Editor, Nature Cell Biology
