Question

Daughter cells of mitosis have the same number of chromosomes as the parent cell while daughter cells of meiosis have half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell. What is the reason for this?

Answer 1

Both mitosis and meiosis occurs in the diploid cells but in meiosis there is generation of 4 daughter cells while in mitosis only two daugheter cells are formed. That's why number of chromosomes in daughter cells form by mitosis remains same as parental cell, but number of chromosomes get reduced in daughter cells generated by meiosis. Let's consider the human cell with 46 chromosomes. After DNA replication in S phase the number of chromosomes becomes 92. Now if cell undergo mitosis it will form two cell and number of chromosomes will get equally divided and each cell will get 46 chromosomes ( similar to parental cell). But if cell undergo meiosis it will generate 4 cells and the number of chromosomes will get equally divided into the 4 cells (92÷4 = 23 ) and each cells will get 23 chromosomes which are half in number as to parental cell (46).