Interphase
Until a few years ago, we knew very little about interphase. In fact, in one classic book on histology,[8] while a description of mitosis required almost 12 pages, interphase was dismissed in less than six lines! The reason for this lack of interest was, of course, the fact that no adequate methods were available for studying metabolic activities of cells in interphase. The methods of high-resolution autoradiography and radiochemical analysis of synchronized cell populations have become available only in the past few years.
We now know that metabolic activities during interphase are of primary importance in understanding the mechanism of cell division. It is, in fact, the orderly sequence of metabolic events occurring in interphase that leads from one mitosis to the next.