MITOSIS Cell Division

Why Divide??? Every second, millions of your body cells are injured or die! If they didn’t reproduce, your body would shrink and shrink until you disappeared!

So how do they divide? Cells divide in a process called mitosis. The beginning cell is called the parent cell. Mitosis is a continuous process, but scientists have broken it into steps or phases to make it easier to understand and remember.

1 - INTERPHASE During interphase, the cell grows and gets ready to divide. It duplicates its chromosomes.

2 - PROPHASE In prophase, the individual chromosomes, which are now made up of two identical strands, shorten and thicken. The nuclear membrane appears to fade.

3 - METAPHASE During metaphase, all of the double strands of chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell.

5 - ANAPHASE During anaphase, each chromosome splits. The two identical halves move to opposite sides of the cell.

5 - TELOPHASE During telophase, a nuclear membrane begins to form around each set of chromosomes. The cytoplasm separates equally into the two new cells, and the two daughter cells are formed.

ONE MORE TIME! So we ended up with two daughter cells that are exactly the same as the parent cell was. They contain the exact same genetic information. Once the daughter cells have had a little time to grow, they will begin to duplicate their genetic information, and it all starts again from the beginning…

NOW YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED… …that the cells in the pictures weren’t real. They were drawn to show the steps really clearly. Here’s what it looks like in REAL cells. Can you follow the phases?

INTERPHASE Interphase can be seen in the surrounding cells in all of the following pictures…

PROPHASE

METAPHASE

ANAPHASE

TELOPHASE