What divides in two in a process called mitosis?
Mitosis three or more daughter cells instead of the normal two is a mitotic error called tripolar mitosis or multipolar mitosis (direct cell triplication / multiplication). Other errors during mitosis can induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) or cause mutations. Certain types of cancer can arise from such mutations. Mitosis occurs only in eukaryotic cells. Prokaryotic cells, which lack a nucleus, divide by a different process called binary fission. Mitosis varies between organisms. For example, animal cells undergo an "open" mitosis, where the nuclear envelope breaks down before the chromosomes separate, whereas fungi undergo a "closed" mitosis, where chromosomes divide within an
Mitosis discovered and described mitosis based on those observations. The term "mitosis", coined by Walther Flemming in 1882, is derived from the Greek word μίτος ("mitos", "warp thread"). There are some alternative names for the process, e.g., "karyokinesis" (nuclear division), a term introduced by Schleicher in 1878, or "equational division", proposed by Weismann in 1887. However, the term "mitosis" is also used in a broad sense by some authors to refer to karyokinesis and cytokinesis together. Presently, "equational division" is more commonly used to refer to meiosis II, the part of meiosis most like mitosis. The primary result of mitosis and