In this video, we're going to begin our lesson on binary fission. Recall from our previous lesson videos that prokaryotes or prokaryotic organisms replicate by the process of binary fission. But eukaryotes do not divide by binary fission. Recall that eukaryotes divide by mitosis. Now, binary fission can be defined as prokaryotic asexual reproduction, meaning that there's only one single parental cell that will divide to form 2 new daughter cells. And the term daughter cells refers to either of the 2 final cells that form after a cell divides.
If we take a look at our image down below, notice on the left-hand side, we're showing you our parental prokaryotic cell. Notice that its chromosome, which is here in blue, is not within a nucleus. It is a circular chromosome. This is a prokaryotic cell. This single parental prokaryotic cell, when it's ready to divide, will divide by the process of binary fission. The process of binary fission allows this single parental cell to divide into 2 daughter cells. We can label these here the daughter cells.
Once again, the daughter cells are the final cells that result from binary fission. This process of binary fission actually contains a few critical steps that include replicating the chromosome so that each of the daughter cells is able to get a copy of the chromosome. We'll be able to talk about some of the steps of binary fission in our next lesson video. But for now, this concludes our brief introduction to binary fission, and I'll see you guys in our next video.
