Week 9 — The Cell Cycle & Mitosis
Why this matters
A nursing student learning why a scraped knee heals and a gardener rooting a houseplant cutting are both watching cells copy themselves and split in two.
In plain language
Your body makes new cells every day, and this week you learn how one cell becomes two. You will meet the cell cycle (the repeating loop of a cell's life: a long stretch of growing and copying, then a short burst of dividing). You will learn mitosis (the orderly way a cell splits its nucleus so each new cell gets an identical set of instructions), step by step and in order. You will see what keeps division in check and what happens in cancer (cell division that has lost its brakes). And you will put a number on how fast a tissue divides by counting cells under a microscope.
- Already covered: Week 3 introduced DNA; Week 4 toured the nucleus and the plant cell wall; Week 8 added the order-and-location habit.
- This week: the cell cycle, mitosis in order, cytokinesis, checkpoints and cancer, and the mitotic index.
- How they connect: mitosis divides Week 4's nucleus and hands each new cell a copy of Week 3's DNA, in a fixed order.
- Where we're going next: Week 10, Meiosis & Sexual Reproduction, makes four unique cells instead of two identical ones.
Focus
How does one cell become two identical cells, and what keeps that division in check?
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
- [ ] name the stages of the cell cycle and the phases of mitosis in order
- [ ] count chromosomes and chromatids before and after the S phase
- [ ] explain cancer as cell division without the brakes
- [ ] compute and read a mitotic index from a cell count
To-do
Plan your week
- Read Chapter 9 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
- Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
- Run the Biology Lab & Inquiry (about 2 hours), then the discussion and the assignment.
- Take the quiz.
This week's checkpoint: name the four phases of mitosis in order, with one clue for each.
You've got this
Take it in order; ask your instructor if a step snags.
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