How do growth factors stimulate cell division?
Then, what is the role of growth factors in cell division?
A growth factor is a naturally occurring substance capable of stimulating cellular growth, proliferation, healing, and cellular differentiation. Growth factors are important for regulating a variety of cellular processes. Growth factors typically act as signaling molecules between cells.
Also question is, how growth factors stimulate cell activity?
Growth factors bind to receptors on the cell surface, with the result of activating cellular proliferation and/or differentiation. Growth factors are quite versatile, stimulating cellular division in numerous different cell types; while others are specific to a particular cell-type.
Growth factors play a key role in cell proliferation, but their actions have been found to be temporally limited (1,–3, 15). Before reaching the restriction point in the G1 phase of the cell cycle, growth factors are required; after it, cell cycle movement to S phase is growth factor independent.