difference between mitosis and meiosis flip book

Only a diploid mother cell can undergo meiosis. One mother cell undergoes two successive divisions, and gives rise to four daughter cells.Ī haploid or diploid mother cell can undergo mitosis. So, some shuffling needs to happen in order to make sure each sex cell has half the chromosomes of a normal cell.One mother cell undergoes a single division, and gives rise to two daughter cells. In this case, each cell can only have 23 chromosomes instead of the normal 46. So, that's easy enough to remember: If cells are dividing, it's almost always through mitosis, unless the product is a gamete that's planning to meet up with another gamete to make a new organism. This way, when sperm and egg fuse during fertilization, the resulting zygote is back to having two versions of each gene.' Meiosis results in four cells called gametes - sex cells - but each has only one version of each gene. 'Mitosis results in two identical 'daughter' cells, each with two versions of every gene - one version from each parent, just like every cell in the body. 'The key to understanding the difference between mitosis and meiosis is not in the steps, but in the final products of each,' says Brandon Jackson, assistant professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Virginia's Longwood University. They just keep replicating this information again and again and again. That's you.Īs you're probably aware, in order to make 'you', and not 'half Paul and half Diane,' some complicated genetic juju had to go down - the 23 chromosomes from each of your parents' gametes had to join forces to make your one-and-only genome (your complete set of DNA), which has been held in the nucleus of almost every one of your cells since you were a wee zygote, or fertilized egg cell. Both of these sex cells contained everything needed - genetically speaking - to make a unique human, the likes of which has never been seen on this planet before.

In order to make you, your biological mom and dad both had to participate in an effort to pitch in one gamete each - a sperm cell and an egg cell, each with 23 chromosomes.

In the beginning, you were just some genetic material. Meiosis occurs when a single cell divides twice to produce four cells containing half the original amount of genetic information. Mitosis is the division of a single cell into two cells (as shown here), each with its own nucleus and the same number and kind of chromosomes as the parent cell.

Difference between mitosis and meiosis flip book