And so the third phase of mitosis is metaphase. Metaphase is pretty easy to remember because you can think that the "m" in metaphase is for the "m" in the word middle. During metaphase, the mitotic spindles are going to align the chromosomes in the middle of the cell in a single file row. The equator or the middle of the cell is referred to as the metaphase plate. If we take a look at our image down below, of course, we're showing you the phases of mitosis. We've already covered prophase and prometaphase in our lesson videos. Here in this video, we're focusing specifically on metaphase, which you can see the image of metaphase is over here on the right, and the events that occur during metaphase are here in the middle.
Of course, when you're thinking about metaphase, you might think about how this "m" here is going to remind you of the "m" in the word metal. The chromosomes are going to align in the middle of the cell on the metaphase plate. Notice that the chromosomes here are lining up in a single file row, right here in the middle of the cell. Now, the fact that the chromosomes are aligning in a single row is actually going to be very important here because later in our course when we're talking about meiosis, we'll see that in some scenarios of meiosis, the chromosomes are not going to align in a single file row and instead they're going to align in two rows. The fact that during mitosis it aligns in a single row is going to be important to keep in mind.
This here concludes our introduction to metaphase and of course, after metaphase is the fourth phase, anaphase, so we'll talk about that in our next video.
