Tab Article
This book explains what cells are and introduces the processes of mitosis and meiosis. Meiosis is a special type of cell division that is designed to produce gametes. Before meiosis occurs, the cell will be double diploid and have a pair of each chromosome, the same as before mitosis. Mitosis is used for almost all of your body’s cell division needs. It adds new cells during development and replaces old and worn-out cells throughout your life. The aim of mitosis is to produce daughter cells that are genetically identical to their mothers, with not a single chromosome more or less. Meiosis, on the other hand, is used for just one purpose in the human body: the production of gametes— sex cells, or sperm and eggs. Its goal is to make daughter cells with exactly half as many chromosomes as the starting cell. The recent discovery of analogous proteins that are involved in the regulation of both meiosis and mitosis makes it increasingly apparent that meiosis is closely related to mitosis, and can be regarded as a highly specialized mitotic division.
