[Nazē.]

Per. 5

Mitosis: Cells Have Fun Too

Mitosis is, first of all, the process by which a cell reproduces by diving in half and forming two daughter cells. There are four stages of this process by which the cell does this. In order, they are: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Interphase is a popular subject when mitosis is mentioned, but technically, it's not actually a part of mitosis; interphase is simply when the cell is continuing to do it's normal activities before mitosis.
Prophase is the first step of mitosis; it is also the longest. In fact, normally, it can use up about 50/60% of the total mitosis time. This stage involves the centrioles, two small structures that are in the cytoplasm freely. One of these takes it's place at one end of the cell, and the other one goes to the opposite side. A sort of spindle starts to form from the two. Then, the nucleolus, which enclosed the chromosomes, vanishes.
Now that the longest stage is over and done with, the process probably goes by a lot faster.
Now for metaphase. Remember, the chromosomes are freely located in the cytoplasm also. They line up across the middle of the cell, and are connected to the spindles by microtubules. Or rather, their centromeres are; which is probably the center of them, right? Yes.
Anaphase! Wait... oh no! The centromeres of the sister chromatids that form a chromosome! They have split! Have they had a fight?! No, silly, they're just duplicating themselves. Now, the two chromatids of each chromosome do just that and become their own chromosome! But that's not all. They form two equal groups of chromosomes, one near one end of the cell near the spindle, the other group at the other end.
Telophase, the fourth and final stage of this fascinating process, must be very important. Sure, I guess. The spindles fall apart. I guess they just couldn't take it anymore. Who can blame them? I'd be anxious to be so important in cell division, too! But anyway... in telophase, each side of where a spindle used to be gets it's own nuclear envelope. And that's about it for mitosis.
...What's that? Oh yes, but mitosis is not completely complete yet, now is it? We still have only one cell! Well, this is where "Cytokinesis" comes in. You might ask what this is and why it is so important. I will tell you! Even though cytokinesis is not a part of mitosis, it nonetheless interferes -- or rather, helps the process. Without it, cell division would not even take place or be finished, ever.
Cytokinesis is simply when the cytoplasm narrows towards the middle and separates, now forming two new daughter cells from a parent cell, who are identical. Pretty nifty, eh? And I thought JRR Tolkien was interesting!