Mitosis and meiosis are two ways cells divide. They are both very important for living things, but they do different things when it comes to genetic diversity.

Mitosis:

• Mitosis helps with growth, healing, and making new cells without involving sex.
• This process creates two identical daughter cells. Each cell has the same number of chromosomes as the original cell. In humans, that means each new cell has 46 chromosomes.
• Mitosis doesn’t change genes by itself, but before mitosis happens, DNA can get changed a little. This is called a mutation, which can add to variety in the long run. In humans, mutations happen about once every 100 million DNA parts each generation.

Meiosis:

• Meiosis is how sperm and eggs are made. It is important for sexual reproduction.

• This process includes two stages: meiosis I and meiosis II. By the end, it creates four daughter cells that are not identical, and each has half the number of chromosomes (23 in humans).

• Meiosis helps create genetic diversity through two main ways:

  1. Independent Assortment: During meiosis I, chromosomes are spread out into daughter cells in a random way. For human gametes, this can create over 8 million different combinations.

  2. Crossing Over: In an early stage of meiosis, chromosomes swap pieces of DNA. This mixes up genes and increases variety even more.

In short, mitosis keeps the genetic makeup the same, while meiosis mixes things up. This mixing is important because it creates a wide variety of traits in the next generation.