What does «amitosis» mean in Spanish?
- Direct cell division. This is the proliferation of cells that does not occur by mitosis (mitosis is the essential and well-studied mechanism for cell division in eukaryotes). Amitosis basically groups together any cell division other than mitosis: cell reproduction takes place with nuclear proliferation without the participation of chromosomes; in mitosis, on the other hand, chromatin is distributed equally in the daughter cells. The phenomenon of amitosis is accepted to occur in ciliates, but it is not accepted by all in the proliferation of mammalian cells. However, the relatively recent discovery of copy number variations in mammalian cells within an organ significantly challenges the long-standing assumption that every cell of an organism must inherit an exact copy of the parental genome to be functional.