Ode to Mitosis
Mitosis is a process
For One cell to become Two
There are Four distinct phases
Happening within You
First comes Prophase
The Chromatin strands condense
They now become visible
Through a microscope lens
Next comes Metaphase
The important Stage Two
Chromosomes attach to Spindle Fiber
Using Molecular Glue
Then comes Anaphase
It’s really quite sad
Sister Chromatids separate
To opposite poles- too bad 😦
Finally, it’s Telophase
Nuclear membranes reform
Spindle fibers disperse
And Two new cells are born.
Poem: Playfully plagiarized, willfully altered and spell-checked from the original “reallygoodpoetry” at http://goo.gl/OVTvb
Images: Gifs from http://infinity-imagined.tumblr.com/page/4
Watch original movie here: http://goo.gl/7HjG7
#ScienceSunday
madame scientist's not-so-mad musings 
I only wish I’d read this poem when I first tried to study this in high school.
No love for Meiosis? 🙂
The editor in me could not leave the original “pome” alone 🙂
What rhymes with Meiosis? 🙂
You make bio class fun :DDD
Wesley Yeoh
This is what i wanted to say. Thanks.
Rajini Rao Mitosis rhymes with meiosis 🙂
Víktor Bautista i Roca , duh, right! I’ll put my rhyming cap on and come up with an addendum 🙂
reminds me of my old Biology classes… good one….
Best science poetry 🙂 you should add a tag for it, very unique 🙂
Rajini Rao Osmosis also rhymes with Meiosis, but I don’t know where you could take that. So do psychosis and schlerosis. I don’t think I’m helping…
Would that so much of what is misunderstood Science be so simply, accurately, colorfully and cleverly put! Thanks, Rajini Rao
Akinola Emmanuel , raising the bar on me! Including psychosis and sclerosis with meiosis will be a fun challenge 🙂
Great..!!!
Thought I m not that into much but I really enjoyed that poem!! Wish science would b taught like that!! Kids would love it !! The gif is more than eye catching. Thnx a lot for the beautiful share Rajini Rao
May I humbly suggest a reproduction of this on your FB page, Rajini Rao ?
Glad you enjoyed it, I can never tire of seeing cells divide. There is so much organization and synchrony involved.
William McGarvey , Facebook does not support gifs 😦
I could link to this, let me try.
Oooh, fun to see! Kids in school should see this kind of animation to make it come alive for them.
Why didn’t you teach me this in school so beautifully (??)…going to like biology now..:D
Very nice and thanks for sharing!
Jitendra Mulay there will be a quiz later 😉
very interesting!!
Nearly fell bad for Anaphase.. nearly. Lovely poem!
Completely awesome Rajini Rao ;D.
I also wrote about the combination of sex chromosomes. Because the either combine xx or xy ? why?
very nice
Yhya Zakrya , there is a special form of mitosis that takes place in the germ cells: the ones that form the egg and sperm. There is a step called meiosis, in which the number of chromosomes is halved. If this were not done, then when the egg and sperm fuse the resulting embryo would have twice as many chromosomes! Before a sperm is formed, the X and Y pair up, and one sperm cell gets the X and the other gets the Y. Since the female has two X chromosomes, all her eggs will get an X. Hope this makes sense!
I really should add a poem for meiosis 🙂
Is it real time ?
agu monkey it’s a time lapse so it must have been sped up, but I don’t know how much. The original video in the link says that the time interval is 7 seconds, perhaps that means every 7 seconds is one frame? In any case, mitosis occurs at different rates in different cells, but can be pretty quick (under an hour).
This is one of my favorite videos of cell division in a Drosophila embryo. The nuclei divide every 8 minutes. Music by Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene. Enjoy! https://plus.google.com/u/0/114601143134471609087/posts/BNcpEXjbs2m
Love it! I bet this will help my students remember the phases.
Rajini Rao Thanks. Thinking that such complex molecules could unfold and restructure themselves in a second made me dizzy.
+1 for music videos featuring Oxygene.
I love Oxygene!!
Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene IV
“Oh, Sis” rhymes with meiosis, and a sister is created through meiosis!
Perhaps it’s easier to find a rhyme for haploid.
Gretchen S. , help, I’m stuck. I should crowd-source this rhyme. This is as far as I got 🙂
Osmosis, psychosis, sclerosis
Are all fine and dandy
But the process of Meiosis, the step before Mitosis
Is really quite handy
When an egg and sperm unite
Their chromosomes will double
Without meiotic foresight, genes would get too tight
And the nucleus in serious trouble
Where’s Shiv Pillai when you need him!?
I will come back later to read the final version Rajini Rao, my rhymer is broken today. This is a nice fun way to learn and is very creative.
nice
excellent. you keep me coming back to google +
Martin Geoffrey Lake , the camera is a fluorescence microscope, specifically a type known as laser scanning confocal microscope. See here for details: http://goo.gl/7HjG7
I’m a science graduate!
nice dear
gonna copy that that, is that in gif format?
rodel catajay , yes it’s a gif. Just drag it out or copy/paste. Use the source info in my post for crediting the gif, thanks.
hi………………
its easier this way to remember, is there another one for meiosis 🙂
guruprasad .g.l , I got partway through a meiosis rhyme and then got stuck. I need inspiration 🙂
“… whenever I wear my sandals, I worry about My-Toesis…” (Just a silly thought: sometimes a horrid pun in rhyme might be memorable.)
William McGarvey , haha! There were similar rhymes in ScienceSunday’s reshare of this post 🙂
Awesome description, but Interphase should have also been included since it’s a major part or Cell Division… 🙂
Sunite Lauchande Interphase is part of the Cell Cycle but not of Mitosis 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_cycle
#Science !
wonderfoul
Rajini Rao I know, but sometimes some people only consider Mitosis and Miosis as the only steps within the Cell Cycle, Interphase as well as many other smaller steps such as Cytokinesis are involved too
That’s an excellent point, Sunite Lauchande . Mitosis is so flashy! People forget that most of a cell’s life time is spent in Interphase: Go, G1, S, G2..only then comes the M of Mitosis. Technically though, not even cytokinesis is part of mitosis. In some embryos, mitosis happens so fast that it takes time for cytokinesis to catch up.
Interesting, you learn something new everyday 🙂
so intresting.is it from FITC
Beautyfull
super
This is a great video
That’s Amazing. I have realized that there is no difference between art, science & creativity.
really gr8 😉 i agree w/ everyone who relates to the education perspective: if science classes had more exciting or “kid” oriented paradigm, there would be millions more school kids getting interested in arts/sciences.
I worked as a CG artist when some producers & marketing folks were thinking of “mining” the kids-interactive market & unfortunately, they kept saying: ‘we have to try this as “edu-tainment.” – YEAH it was indeed creepy ! However, the fact still remains that education leaves too many kids in the cold re: math/arts/sciences.
are yall familiar w/ Ken Robinson’s brilliant TED talks re: how to educate kids in a more inspiring, healthy methodology ? OK: ENJOY, ..video is only a few minutes, trust me u’ll want to checkout K.Robinson if u have not so far -> [“adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education & creativity expert..recipient of the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin award”] http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U
Thanks, rob M. , for the link. Will check it out!
rob M., Yes, I was not interested in many subjects other than few subjects like science, if such paradigm were there in my school that might not happen in my school life.
Awesome gif. This stuff should be taught in schools.
Arnav Kalra , have not seen you in a while 🙂 Yes, teachers should make liberal use of movies and gifs in the classroom!
That was because I’d left Google plus. Just came to take a look and saw this.
They do make use of movies but most of them are really bad and not useful imo.
Good…!
what is this
Good
really nice
good
Excellent video & awesome poem. I was very lucky to have several outstanding bio profs who also made the subject fun – nothing wrong with making it exciting to learn.
Ode! I just stepped on a nail, and mitosis killing me!
Susan LaDuke like
Reminds me of days when i taught Biology to Sophomores of Yap SDA school….
so much beter
I like all your posts,and teachings thank you.
Colour is truly magnetising….It’s how one sees it!
nice