Mitosis

    Cells split. We grow. It splits again. We grow again. It splits again. Then we grow even more. This repeating process of cellular division is one of our cell’s basic functions of life. However, to split and divide something like a cell, you need to accurately replicate all the information inside. We call this process cellular division, but that name doesn’t quite live up to the process. If you split a book in half, you would only get half the knowledge, which would actually really suck because if you got half the biology textbook, you would fail Mr. Wong’s final exam. Therefore, our cell has mitosis, which nuclear replication more accurately describes than cell division.

    In this experiment, we are looking at the stages of cellular division/nuclear replication aka mitosis. We used whitefish blastula and onion root tip cell to observe this process. Why? Because if we used another cell, our lab time would be used up before we even got to observe and take all the pictures. Then I wouldn’t be able to write this report. Whitefish blastula are the embryo of the whitefish as it starts developing. This causes a lot of mitosis activity as babies grow much faster than we do. Or else everyone in this class would be over 30 feet tall by now, comparable to the BFG, and adults would be suffering from the many disadvantages of being too tall. Onion root tip cells have a lot of mitosis activity mainly because the root is the part of the plant that grows the most. Why the onion root cells though? Mainly because it is easier to see. That’s all.

    For this part of the experiment, I took pictures of the different stages and posted them on the worksheet below.

In this next part of the mitosis experiment, we are going to see how often the cells stay in each state. I believe that the most common state is going to be interphase, because otherwise we would grow too fast, as said before. With the help of Mr. Wong and the advanced microscope in class, I was able to take 3 excellent field of view pictures of the onion cell. Here they are:

    I have also filled in the chart of how often they occur. Please excuse my sorry counting skills because this situation does not permit me to use permutations or combinations.

    However, the chart is not accurate for all of the cell because we only took pictures of the parts that are actively dividing. Because if we took pictures of the non active sites, that would be very boring and would be a very sad excuse for this experiment. Imagine all of the cells in interphase and prophase. Because of this, our results would have been dramatically different as there would be mostly interphase.

    It takes a lot of time for prophase and a very short time for metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Interphase takes up the most time though, because we are staying the same most of the time without changing. It takes time for the cell to grow and split. It’s like going to read another book before you finished this one. Prophase does take up a lot of time though, which is very interesting.

   My conclusion was supported, as it took a lot of time for interphase, even at the active sites. Mitosis is the basic function of life. However, the life of cells must end sometime, and so does this report. So regrettably, if this was a cell, about now it would go through apoptosis.