Question

What if humans could reproduce through mitosis instead of using meiosis? What would children look like if parents reproduced using mitosis? Would there be any pitfalls in a population of humans if mitosis were the primary method for reproduction?

Answer 1

We know that mitosis in equational division. One parent cell undergoes mitosis to form two daughter cells. The daughter cells formed are identical to one another and also to the parent cell. There are no variation in the process of mitosis. Hence, if mitosis was used as the means of formation of gametes and undergoing reproduction, then there would have been no variations among all the individuals present on this planet and the process of evolution would not have taken place. By the word evolution, we mean to say that the organisms are evolving by creation of variation and absence of mitosis would mean absence of variation and absence of evolution.

If meiosis was primarily used for the maintenance and growth of somatic body of an individual, then after every round of cell division, the amount of DNA present in the cell would have reduced to half. This would have led to decrease in the size of cell and therefore decrease in the size of organism with the course of time. This would have been a great problem because the organism would have been left with very less amount of DNA at some point of time as compared to the amount of DNA present initially in organism. This type of process would not have been maintained in reality.

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