In this video, we're going to begin our introduction to cell division. Now, cell division can be defined as the process of a single parent cell dividing or splitting into greater than or equal to 2 or more daughter cells. And so this term "daughter cells," you'll hear your professor use it occasionally from time to time and you'll see it throughout your textbooks as well. And so this term "daughter cells" is really just referring to the cells that result from cell division or cell splitting. Now, moving forward in our course, we're going to talk about 3 main types of cell division, and we have these 3 main types numbered 1, 2, and 3 down below.
And of course, the numbers in our text correspond with the numbers that you see down below throughout our image. And so, the first main type of cell division that we're going to introduce is called binary fission. And really, the most important thing that you should know about binary fission is that this is a type of prokaryotic cell division. And so only prokaryotic cells like bacteria or archaea are going to divide by binary fission, but eukaryotic cells that do have a nucleus, they do not divide by binary fission. And so let's take a look at our image down below over here on the left-hand side to clear some of this up.
And so notice that we're showing you an image of binary fission. And once again, binary fission is a type of cell division that only occurs in prokaryotic cells like bacteria or archaea that do not have a nucleus. And so notice here we're showing you a single parent prokaryotic cell that does not have a nucleus, and notice that its DNA is just floating on the inside of the cell in the cytoplasm in a region called the nucleoid, which is a review from our older lesson videos. But, the big point here of binary fission is that it starts with a prokaryotic cell, and notice that by the end of the process, there are 2 cells, 2 prokaryotic cells, and so these 2 cells are termed the daughter cells since these are the cells that result from the cell division. And notice that each daughter cell down below has a copy of the DNA, which is in green, And that means that this original copy of the DNA is going to have to get replicated or duplicated at some point in this process, but we'll talk more about DNA replication later in our course.
And again, the biggest takeaway for binary fission is that this is how prokaryotic cells divide. Now the other two types of cell division that we're going to introduce are types of eukaryotic cell division. And so we're going to look at them specifically as they apply to the human life cycle. And so the second type of cell division that we're going to talk about is mitosis, whereas the 3rd type of cell division that we're going to talk about is meiosis. Now, I'll admit at first glance, mitosis and meiosis, they sound really, really similar, and in fact, it turns out not only do they sound similar, but they also have a lot of similarities.
But mitosis and meiosis are different processes. And so moving forward in our course, it's going to be very important for you guys to be able to distinguish between mitosis and meiosis. Now, moving forward in our course, we're mainly going to try to break down mitosis first, but then after we're done breaking down mitosis, then we'll switch over to discuss meiosis. Now, just to give you a little bit of background information about mitosis and meiosis, Mitosis again is a eukaryotic cell division, that is going to produce what are known as somatic cells. And somatic cells are really just body cells that do not get passed down to the next generation.
And so somatic cells or body cells would include cells like our heart cells, our liver cells, and our skin cells. Now human somatic cells are what are known as diploid cells. And, we'll talk more about diploid, later in our course, but really what diploid means is that there are going to be 2 copies of every chromosome inside these cells. And so diploid is going to be symbolized using the symbol called 2n. And so anytime you see 2n, you know that it represents a diploid cell.
And again, you can think the n here represents the number of copies of chromosomes, and of course, diploid cells have 2 copies of every chromosome. Now, meiosis, on the other hand, the third type of cell division is also a eukaryotic cell division. But instead of producing somatic cells like mitosis does, meiosis produces what are known as gametes. And gametes are really just the fancy, scientific name for sex cells such as the sperm in male and the eggs in females. Now human gametes on the other hand, unlike human somatic cells, they are not diploid and so they don't have 2 copies of every chromosome.
Instead, human gametes are what are known as haploid cells. And haploid kinda sounds like half, so they have half the number of chromosomes. So instead of having 2 copies of every chromosome, they're only going to have one copy of every chromosome. And again, if this diploid and haploid concept was a little bit difficult for you to understand, we're going to talk more about it later in our course. So this is more so of a foreshadowing for you guys to get to understand these terms a bit early.
And so let's take a look at our image down below over here on the right-hand side to better distinguish mitosis and meiosis. And so what's important to note again is that this image is showing the human life cycle. So what you'll notice here at the top are 2 adults. Notice that there's a male and there is a female, and the males produce what are known as gametes, that are called sperm cells. And so, this process is going to be meiosis.
Meiosis is the process that is going to produce the sex cells, the gametes, such as the sperm and the egg. And the egg over here is, the sex cell or the gamete of the female. Now notice that these gametes here are haploid. They have the n symbol here which represents haploid. So that means that they have half the number of chromosomes.
They only have one copy of every chromosome. And that's because during sexual reproduction the sperm and the egg gametes are going to merge together in a process that's called fertilization. So you can see the sperm here merging with the egg. And they each have half the number of chromosomes. They each have one copy of every chromosome.
So when they merge together, the resulting cell, which is called a zygote, ends up having 2 copies of every chromosome, so it becomes a diploid cell. And so the zygote here is a diploid cell, the very first cell of a human. And so this zygote ends up growing and growing and growing into many million, and trillions of cells through the process called mitosis. And mitosis is what takes a diploid cell and creates more diploid cells, and it allows the single-celled zygote to grow into a baby, and it also allows the baby to grow up into a toddler and to grow up into a kid, into a teenager, and eventually grow up into a full adult, either the male or the female. And notice that humans, adults are all diploid.
So you can see the zygote is diploid, the baby has diploid cells, and the adults also have diploid cells, which are 2n. And the only ones that are haploid are going to be the gametes, the sex cells, which are only will only have one copy of every chromosome. Now, again, this here is just the introduction to mitosis, which basically represents this entire green region here, and then meiosis, which represents this small section here of the life cycle. And again, moving forward in our course, we're mainly going to introduce mitosis first, and then later in our course, we'll talk more about meiosis. So this here concludes our introduction to cell division.
And again, as we move forward in our course, we're going to get to learn a lot more about each of these cell divisions. So I'll see you all in our next video.
