the.com/cytokinesis
One cell throws a rope around its own waist and pulls until it becomes two.
means The final step of cell division, in which the cytoplasm physically splits in two, giving each daughter cell its own membrane and contents after the nucleus has already divided.
from Built from Greek kytos, 'vessel' or 'hollow container' (the root that gives us 'cell' in biology-speak), and kinesis, 'movement' — the same kinesis in 'kinetic.' So the word literally announces 'cell-movement,' coined in the late 19th/early 20th century by biologists who needed a precise term for the pinching, contracting choreography a cell performs to cleave itself in two, distinct from mitosis, which only covers the nucleus splitting.
- actin ring
- a contractile ring squeezes the cell like a tightening drawstring
- timing
- happens only after chromosomes safely finish separating in mitosis
- plants cheat
- plant cells build a wall instead of pinching, no waist available
- get it wrong
- failure produces one cell with double the DNA, a common cancer trait