Mitosis is the process that results in two identical daughter cells. The separation of sister chromatids is essential to ensure that both daughter cells receive a copy of each chromosome. The maintenance of ploidy is a way of describing that the daughter cells will have the same number of each chromosome as the parent cells.

Crossing over, or recombination, is a process that only takes place during meiosis and helps promote genetic diversity. 

The correct order of the stages of mitosis is as follows: prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase. Prometaphase is the stage of mitosis in which the nuclear membrane breaks down and the mitotic spindles begin to interact with the kinetochore region of sister chromatids, beginning the process of lining up the chromosomes along central plane of the cell. Chromosomes condense in prophase. During metaphase, the chromosomes line up along the metaphase plate, and during anaphase, the sister chromatids are pulled apart to opposite poles of the cell. 

Centrioles are composed of nine triplets of microtubules arranged in a ring. A pair of centrioles makes up a centrosome, which is important in the formation of mitotic spindles in mitosis and meiosis and in the organization of microtubules in the cytoplasm. Cilia are also made of microtubules, but arranged in a different way. Cilia have nine pairs of microtubules around the edge of the cilium, and another pair of microtubules in the middle of the cilium.

Mitotic spindles attach to the kinetochore region of the centromere, the area of a chromosome that links sister chromatids. Centromeres are not always in the center of a chromosome, sister chromatids can be metacentric, acrocentric, or telocentric where the centromere is located in the middle, towards one end of a chromosome, or at the end of a chromosome arm, respectively. In eukaryotes, centromeres contain repeating DNA sequences in a highly compacted state. The kinetochore is a protein complex that assembles at the centromere that is able to bind to both the centromeric DNA and to mitotic spindles. Each sister chromatid has it’s own kinetochore.

During cytokinesis, the cell physically divides into two daughter cells. In animals, this is done through the formation of a contractile ring, composed of myosin and actin filaments, that forms at the cell equator. The filaments contract to form a cleavage furrow, where the cell membrane begins to invaginate and eventually pinches off to form two daughter cells. Note that the myosin found in the contractile ring in different from that in muscle cells. Also note that in animals cells, cytokinesis involves the formation of a cell plate, rather than a contractile ring.

Motor proteins are a class of proteins that use energy from ATP hydrolysis to move along a substrate. Two classes of motor proteins control movement along microtubules: kinesins and dyneins. Kinesins and dyneins differ from one another in the direction of their movement; kinesins “walk” towards the positive end of the microtubule and dyneins move towards the negative end. During mitosis, mitotic spindles originate from the centrosomes. The end of the microtubule at the centrosome is the negative end, while the end attached to the kinetochore is the positive end. Thus, to move a sister chromatid to a cell pole, towards the negative end of a microtubule, a dynein is involved. 

The condensation of chromatin happens during prophase, resulting in rod-shaped chromosomes that are visible via microscopy. This happens after the replication of genetic material during interphase. The chromosomes are already condensed by metaphase and anaphase.

Metaphase is the stage of mitosis in which sister chromatids line up at the metaphase plate and mitotic spindles interact with the kinetochores of the chromatids. The metaphase plate is the area where sister chromatids line up. This line is imaginary, but is equidistant from both cell poles. The contractile ring will begin forming at a similar location, but the chromosomes lining up at the metaphase plate and the formation of the contractile ring are events in mitosis that are temporally separate, and thus, never actually interact. 

During interphase, the parent cell grows, synthesizes proteins, and replicates its genetic material following the semiconservative model of DNA synthesis. By the end of interphase, the parent cell is nearly double it’s original size, including more cytoplasm, proteins, and organelles, and has a duplicated genome. At the end of mitosis, the parent cell begins the process of cytokinesis, in which a contractile ring of myosin and actin forms in the middle of the cell, pinching off the parent cell into two daughter cells. The resulting two daughter cells are roughly the same size and are genetically identical to each other.

In higher eukaryotic (animal) cells, the nuclear membrane breaks down during prometaphase and two nuclear membranes reform around the segregated genetic material during telophase. This process has been observed under electron and fluorescence microscopy. In lower eukaryotes, such as yeast, the nuclear membrane is maintained, with mitotic spindles either penetrating it or forming within it.