Introduction

Among the defining abilities of a living cell is its capacity to grow and divide. Every new cell traces its origin to an already-existing cell that has split in two, cells are never created from scratch, only ever added to by the division of what is already there. When a parent cell divides, it does not just split its cytoplasm; it also passes on a copy of its genetic material to each of the resulting daughter cells, so that the hereditary information of the parent is preserved and carried forward into every generation of cells that follows.