This has been bugging me for a long time- what's the difference between miosis and mitosis?

Meiosis is the division of cells to form gametes (egg and sperm cells). Mitosis is the division of cells to form somatic cells and cells of the central nervous system.

Meiosis is the essence of sexual reproduction, which was a huge advance over mitosis from the perspective of Darwinian evolution.

The key element of meiosis is "crossing over" of chromosomes, whereby the genes get reshuffled during gamete formation, so that the offspring get an unpredictable combination of genes from each parent. That way each offpsring of the same two parents is unique.

This allows way more genetic variation compared to simple binary fission (mitosis, or "cloning," with its only occasional mutations). In turn, natural selection wouldn't be very effective without all the underlying genetic variation resulting from sexual reproduction based on gamete formation by meiosis.

This is a very common question. As a HumBio teacher, I've learned to give the basics first and let my students' amazing brains go from there.

I posted the main differences on the following site. I even used this forum as a source!!!

http://www.comparati.com/132-Meiosis-vs-Mitosis

quote:

Meiosis is the division of cells to form gametes (egg and sperm cells). Mitosis is the division of cells to form somatic cells and cells of the central nervous system.