Final words: cell age and cell cycle are unlinked Original Research Article

Cooper has a simple belief: that the cell cycle is connected to age and size. Furthermore, as a result of this connection in his mind he believes that there are no possible manipulations that can operate on a batch culture to synchronize cells within the cell cycle, such that those cells can undergo a semblance of a normal cell cycle. His formulation of this argument is as a ‘fundamental law’, the law of conservation of cell-age order (LCCAO). The first part of this law – ‘there is no batch treatment of the culture that can lead to an alteration of the cell-age order’ – can probably be proved true, in the mathematical sense, and certainly makes intuitive sense. Unfortunately the corollaries of this law are rather suspect, drawing inferences from cell age to cell size to the cell cycle.