What if humans could reproduce through mitosis instead of using meiosis? What would children look like if parents reproduced using mitosis? Would there be any pitfalls in a population of humans if mitosis were the primary method for reproduction?

Things would be a lot different. Children would be identical to their parents. Mitosis copies a cell and its DNA so the child's DNA would be identical to the parents and they would look exactly alike. It would be like a lot of twins walking around. That is assuming there are no mutations in the mitosis process. I feel like there would be a lot of pitfalls in a population of humans if mitosis were the primary method of reproduction. Everyone will be like a copy of someone else and there will be no room for differences. This would cause a lot of problems with the population because it would be so much different than it is now. Everyone would asexually reproduce and there would be less sexual reproduction. This would probably lead to many problems that I can't even think of.

Sorry I can't explain it better because i'm only in 8'th grade.

akposevictor akposevictor · Answer 2 · 2021-10-26T19:34:50+02:00

The pitfalls that would occur if humans can only reproduce through mitosis rather than meiosis are:

All humans would look almost exactly the same, carrying identical DNAs. The gene pool of the human race would be reduced.
Gametes (sperm and cell) won't be produce leading to other unthinkable problems that would be encountered by the human race.

Meiosis and mitosis are both mechanisms of cell division, however, they differ.

Schematic diagrams of the process of meiosis and mitosis have been illustrated respectively in the diagram attached below.

During sexual reproduction, meiosis is what occurs for gametes (egg and sperm) to be produced. This is important as each of the parents donate half of their chromosomes containing the DNA, and passes them to the offspring.

By this way, an individual is unique from every other human being having their own unique DNA.

On the other hand, mitosis often requires just one parent. A cell undergoes cell division during mitosis to produce two identical daughter cells. Genetically, the offspring are the same as their parent and as other daughter cells that are produced from same parents.

In summary, if humans could only produce through mitosis instead of meiosis, all humans would look just exactly like each other with no genetic variation. The pitfalls that would occur are:

All humans would look almost exactly the same carrying identical DNAs. The gene pool of the human race would be reduced.
Gametes (sperm and cell) won't be produce leading to other unthinkable problems that would be encountered by the human race.

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