An exercise Jackson does in his biology classes is to take two sentences and call them “chromosomes.” For the sake of this article, we did sentence 1. bold so that it is easy to follow its path through the processes of mitosis and meiosis.
Both sentences describe basically the same idea, but sentence 1 (an egg, with 23 chromosomes) comes from the female parent (in bold), and sentence 2 (a sperm, also with 23 chromosomes) comes from the male parent.
Sentence 1: Imagine a rabbit hiding in the bushes.
Sentence 2: Conceptualize a hare wrapped in vegetation.
Both mitosis and meiosis start from here and duplicate the DNA, giving us two of each phrase.
Imagine a rabbit hiding in the bushes.
Imagine a rabbit hiding in the bushes.
Conceptualize a hare wrapped in vegetation.
Conceptualize a hare wrapped in vegetation.
The next step of mitosis separates the duplicates and then sorts them again to create twin cells, each of which contains genetic material inherited from both the mother and the father. They can then make duplicates of themselves that are almost exactly the same as the duplicates your red blood cells or liver cells made last year or 20 years ago.
Imagine a rabbit hiding in the bushes.
Conceptualize a hare wrapped in vegetation.
Imagine a rabbit hiding in the bushes.
Conceptualize a hare wrapped in vegetation.
The first stage of mitosis(scientifically known as Meiosis I), takes the duplicated DNA that marks the beginning of the mitosis process, copies it, resulting in two daughter cells, each with complete sets of chromosomes, and then shuffles them like a deck of cards:
Conceptualize a rabbit hidden in the vegetation.
Imagine a hare wrapped in shrubbery.
imagine a rabbit wrapped in shrubbery.
Conceptualize a hare hidden in the vegetation.
The first step (scientifically known as Meiosis I) is when a single cell is copied, resulting in two daughter cells, each containing a complete set of chromosomes.
Conceptualize a rabbit hidden in the vegetation.
Imagine a hare wrapped in shrubbery.
imagine a rabbit wrapped in shrubbery.
Conceptualize a hare hidden in the vegetation.
The second step (scientifically known as Meiosis II) then separates the new daughter cells, placing each one into its own cell, leaving four cells with different DNA in each.
Conceptualize a rabbit hidden in the vegetation.
Imagine a hare wrapped in shrubbery.
imagine a rabbit wrapped in shrubbery.
Conceptualize a hare hidden in the vegetation.
“Each sentence says the same thing, but with different versions of each word; each version is an allele, in DNA language,” Jackson says. “Each allele is a mixture of words from the male and female parents.”