Modeling Mitosis Lab printable pdf download

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Modeling Mitosis

How do cells make more of themselves?

You may have seen fruit flies buzzing around a bowl of fruit. They are

tiny, but if you look closely you may see red or white eyes. Like all

living organisms, fruit flies grow. Growth occurs when cells reproduce

or make copies of themselves. Mitosis is the process by which a cell

divides into two daughter cells, each of which has the same number of

chromosomes as the original cell. In this investigation you will

simulate mitosis in fruit flies.

Materials

• Large piece of construction paper

• 16 pipe cleaners of 2 different colors and 4 matching lengths

• O-shaped cereal (Cheerios)

• Colored pencils (red, green, blue, and yellow)

• Marker

Procedure

a. Copy the chart (right) onto a piece of poster board. The circles represent a fruit fly body

cell in different stages of the cell cycle and mitosis.

b. Get a set of pipe cleaners to represent chromosomes. One color will represent the

mother and the other color will represent the father. Chromosomes occur in homologous

pairs (homologous means having a similar structure). So use the same length of pipe

cleaner for each homologous pair. You should have two sets of four different lengths of

pipe cleaners.

c. Begin by assembling a diploid set of chromosomes for a fruit fly as they exist during

most of interphase (step 1 on the board). A diploid set contains pairs of homologous

chromosomes. Each chromosome at this point will be a single strand. You will have an

extra set of each length and color left over. Here is a diploid set:

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1. What is the diploid number of chromosomes in a fruit fly?

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2. How many homologous pairs of chromosomes does a fruit fly have?

3. In the diagram (right), name the steps that are part of mitosis.

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4. Which steps are parts of the rest of the cell cycle?

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Modeling mitosis

a. In late interphase (step 2 on your board), the amount of DNA doubles. That means each chromosome

now doubles. Select a matching pipe cleaner (same length and color) for each chromosome and slide

both through a piece of cereal. You now should have a set of eight doubled chromosomes arranged in

homologous pairs.

b. Review the mitosis diagram in your textbook and move the chromosomes through the rest of the steps

on your board.

Modeling Mitosis Lab