Mitosis
One of the most remarkable characteristics of cells is their ability to grow and divide. New cells come from preexisting cells. When a cell reaches a certain stage in its life, it divides into two parts. These parts, after another period of growth, can in turn divide. In this way plants and animals grow to their normal size and injured tissues are repaired. Cell division occurs when some of the contents of the cell have been doubled by replication, or copying (to be discussed later). The division of a cell results in two roughly equal new parts, the daughter cells. The process of cell division is known as mitosis and is diagrammed in [Figure 6].
Mitosis is a continuous process; the following stages of the process are designated only for convenience. During interphase the cell is busy metabolizing, synthesizing new cellular materials, and preparing for self-duplication by synthesizing new chromosomes. In prophase the chromosomes, each now composed of two identical strands called chromatids, shorten by coiling, and the nucleolus and nuclear membrane disappear. During metaphase the chromosomes line up in one plane near the cell equator. At anaphase the sister chromatids of each chromosome separate, and each part moves toward the ends, or poles, of the cell. During telophase the chromosomes uncoil and return to invisibility; a new nucleus, nucleolus, and nuclear membrane are reconstituted at each end, and division of the cell body occurs between the new nuclei, forming the two new cells. Each daughter cell thereby receives a full set of chromosomes, and, since the genes are in the chromosomes, each daughter cell has the same genetic complement.
Figure 7 Photomicrograph of cells of the Trillium plant, which has five chromosomes, in anaphase. Note the duplicate sets of chromosomes moving to opposite poles of the cell.
All life processes use up energy and therefore require fuel. The mitochondria have a central role in the reactions by which the energy of sugars is supplied for cellular activity. The importance of this vital activity is obvious. In this booklet, however, we are concerned with the processes, involving nucleic acids and proteins, that can be described as making up “the gene-action system”. The gene-action system is the series of biochemical events that regulate and direct all life processes by “transcription” of the genetic “information” contained in molecules of DNA.