The Cell Cycle

The cell cycle is the series of events that take place in a cell leading to its division and duplication of its dna to create two daughter cells. The cell cycle can be thought of as the life cycle of a cell. Basically, it is the series of growth and development steps a cell undergoes between its birth formation by the dividing of the mother cell, and reproduction division to take two new daughter cells. To divide, a cell must complete some important tasks, it has to grow, copy its genetic material, and physically split into daughter cells. Cells perform these tasks in a very organized, and predictable amount of steps that make up the cell cycle. The cell cycle is a cycle, opposed to a linear pathway, because at the end of each go around, the daughter cells can start the exact

It also duplicates a organizing structure called the centrosome. The centrosomes help separate dna during M phase. In G2 phase, the cell grows more and makes more proteins and organelles, and begins to reorganize its contents in preparation for mitosis. G2 phase ends when mitosis begins. The G1, G2, and S phase together is known as interphase. Interphase takes place between one mitotic phase and the next. In M phase, the cell divides its copied dna and cytoplasm to make two new cells. It involves two distinct division related processes. Mitosis and cytokinesis. In mitosis, the nuclear dna of the cell condenses into visible chromosomes and is pulled apart by the mitotic spindle, a structure made out of microtubules. Mitosis takes place in four stages, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Different cells take different lengths of time to complete the cell cycle. A human cell might take a full 24 hours to divide. Different types of cells also split their time between cell cycle phases in different ways. Cancer is a disease where regulation of the cell cycle goes awry and normal cell growth and behavior is