Experiment Mitosis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Experiment Mitosis - Essay Example Cell division is a fundamental process in both plants and animals’ growth and development as well as recreation. This paper investigates the mitosis process in both plants and animals’ cells to identify distinct stages of mitosis and the structure of cells at each stage. The experiment identifies similarity in mitotic stages for cells in both plants and animals. The mitotic process leads to division of one parent cell to form two identical daughter cells that can further undergo subsequent mitotic divisions. Introduction Cells are the fundamental elements of living things, both plants and animals. Consequently, realized mechanisms originate from cells and manifest in organs and the entire organism. Mitosis and meiosis are some of the fundamental processes that take place at the cell level. They refer to cell divisions that lead to generation of new cells to replace dead or worn out cells, generation of cells for development of organs, and cell division towards growth. M itosis leads to generation of identical daughter cells for growth or replacement of cells in organs. It takes place in a number of stages, interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, and cytokinesis (Goldberg and Goldberg, p. 77- 80). The interphase is a preliminary stage in cell division that precedes the mitotic stages. It is fundamental as it forms the largest percentage of a cell’s life. The major activity at this stage is replication of cell proteins within cells and developments to visibility of cell nucleoli. Mitosis however has four stages that result into cell division. The first stage is the prophase, followed by metaphase, anaphase, and telophase respectively (Goldberg and Goldberg, p. 79). At the prophase, â€Å"strands of chromosomes begin to condense† and can be seen with the aid of a powered microscope. Visibility of the nucleoli however disappears while fibers develop in the cell’s cytoplasm. The developed fibers emanates from a pair of centrosomes that stretch to opposite poles of the cytoplasm. Disintegration of the â€Å"nuclear membrane begins† at this stage and marks the end of the prophase and the process moves to the metaphase (Goldberg and Goldberg, p. 79). At the metaphase stage, the chromosomes are arranged along a plate that is perpendicular to the centrioles’ plane and the â€Å"spindle fibers† interlink the centrosomes and the chromosomes (Goldberg and Goldberg, p. 79). A new phase, the anaphase is then marked by disintegration of chromosomes into centromeres that are then attracted to the centrosomes along the fibers (Goldberg and Goldberg, p. 79). The cell then enters a new phase, the telophase, where the pulled chromosomes converge at the opposite sides of the cell, along the fibers and the nuclear membrane begins to reappear. Each set of chromosomes assumes the normal thread like structure and the nuclear membrane develop around each group of chromosomes to form two nucleuses within the cytoplasm (Toole and Toole, p. 139). The cytokinesis process, where the cytoplasm divides to form two different cells then follows this (Goldberg and Goldberg, p. 79- 80). The structure of the cells in plants and in animals may however be different. This is because of a number of factors such as the lack of significance of the spindle fibers in the plant cells. The nucleus, rather than spindle fibers in plant cells, moves to define the new position of chromosomes in the mitosis process (Cassimeris, Plopper and Lingappa, p. 952). This paper seeks to explore mitosis in plants and animals’ cells. It aims at describing chromosomal events in mitosis, differentiating between plants and animal cytokinesis, and explaining why mitotic divisions are necessary in living systems. Materials and methods The experiment used the following materials and equipments Allium root tip slide Whitefish blastula slide Living onion roots Acetic oxcelin Mitosis models Methods Using a prepare d slide of onion root tip and a 4x objective, a