In this video, we're going to distinguish between asexual and sexual reproduction. All living organisms must reproduce or generate more living offspring via one of two types of reproduction that we have numbered below, number 1 and number 2. The numbers that you see here in the text correspond with the numbers that you see down below in the image.
Now, the first main type of reproduction is asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction, of course, means that there's no sexual activity involved in the reproduction. And if you think about it, if there's no sexual activity involved, that means that there's only one single parent involved in asexual reproduction. And if there's only one single parent involved in asexual reproduction, that means that there's only one single source of the DNA from that one single parent. And if there's only one single source of the DNA, then that means that the offspring are all going to be genetically identical to one another because they are all going to be resulting from this single parent, with only one source of DNA.
On the other hand, the second type of reproduction is sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction, as its name implies, means that sexual activity is involved. And, of course, sexual activity means that there are going to be two parents involved in this type of reproduction instead of just one parent. And if there are two parents involved, that means that there are two sources of the DNA. One source of the DNA would be the father. The other source of the DNA would be the mother. Typically, with sexual reproduction, the father and the mother do not have identical DNA. Their DNA is going to be different from one another. And so we have two different sources of DNA, and that's going to result in offspring that are genetically diverse from one another. They will not be genetically identical under most circumstances when it comes to sexual reproduction.
Now let's take a look at our image down below to further distinguish between asexual and sexual reproduction. Over here on the left-hand side, these two images for binary fission and mitosis are falling under the category of asexual reproduction because they do not involve any sexual activity. And again, that means that there's only one parent involved. And so notice that for both binary fission and mitosis, the very beginning starts with just one single parent cell. And at the end of the process, it results in two daughter cells for both. But because there's only one single parent cell involved in both binary fission and mitosis, they're both forms of asexual reproduction. And because there's only one single parent cell, there's only one source of DNA and the cells that result are going to be genetically identical to each other. For both, again, binary fission And, for the process of mitosis, two daughter cells that are resulting are going to be genetically identical.
This is not the case with this right side of the image over here, which is showing you sexual reproduction. And so sexual reproduction, of course, is going to involve two parents instead of one. So you can see the male parent over here and the female parent over here. And it's the process of meiosis, not to be confused with mitosis, that forms the gametes or the sex cells. And because meiosis forms the sex cells, meiosis is more closely linked to sexual reproduction since, again, it forms the sex cells, the sperm, and the egg. And of course, the sperm and the egg are going to fuse together to form the zygote, which ends up resulting in the individual, the offspring if you will.
What's important to note about sexual reproduction is that it's going to create genetically diverse offspring. We'll get to talk more and more about these ideas as we move forward in our course. But for now, this here concludes our introduction to the difference between asexual and sexual reproduction, and we'll be able to get some practice as we move forward.
So I'll see you all in our next video.