ON DETERMINISTIC ORIGINS OF MITOTIC VARIABILITY

A significant part of the variability of the duration of the mitotic cycle may arise simply from the fact that the cell cycle is the product of the interaction of a large number of regulated subcellular systems which are loosely coupled to one another. It is suggested that mitotic variability would be a feature of the mitotic cycle even if non-deterministic (probabilistic) factors (e.g. critical processes in the cell cycle resulting from the action of a small number of molecules) played no role in the cycle. © 1968.