Mitosis
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40 free Mitosis trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every time you heal a cut or grow a little taller, your cells are quietly copying themselves. Mitosis is the carefully choreographed part of that process, in which a cell sorts its duplicated chromosomes into matching sets, and it is happening somewhere in your body right now. This quiz covers the ground a biology class does: the stages in order and what you would see under the microscope in each, the structures that haul chromosomes around, how plant and animal cells finish the job differently, and how mitosis compares with the division that makes sex cells. It also goes beyond the textbook, with the scientists who first watched cells divide, the medicines that work by stopping division, and what happens when the controls fail. The questions run from middle school basics to a few stretch questions for AP and college biology, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so it works as a study check before a test as well as a quiz night round.
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Q 01Many chemotherapy drugs block mitosis in fast-dividing cells, causing which common side effect?
Hair loss
Hair loss follows because hair follicles hold some of the fastest-dividing cells in the body, so drugs aimed at dividing tumor cells hit them too. The gut lining suffers for the same reason.
Q 02Which human organ can regrow to full size by mitosis after surgeons remove a large part of it?
Liver
The liver is the only internal organ that can pull this off, which is why a living donor can give part of theirs away. Its cells normally sit idle and rarely divide.
Q 03Whose tumor cells, taken without her knowledge at Johns Hopkins, still divide in labs worldwide?
Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, but her cells became the first human cell line able to divide without limit. Known as HeLa, they were used to test the first polio vaccine.
Q 04Named for how chromosomes look under a microscope, 'mitosis' comes from the Greek word for what?
Thread
Thread is the meaning of the Greek 'mitos': stained chromosomes showed up as long strands at the start of division, two decades before anyone linked them to heredity.
Q 05What does mitosis, the division behind growth and tissue repair, produce from one parent cell?
Two identical cells
Two identical cells result, each carrying the same DNA as the parent. That is why the fresh skin replacing what you shed every day is a perfect match for the old.
Q 06Which human cell type can never divide by mitosis because it ejects its nucleus as it matures?
Red blood cells
Red blood cells give up their nucleus to make room for more oxygen-carrying hemoglobin, so bone marrow has to build replacements at a rate of over two million every second.
Q 07A human cell with 23 pairs of chromosomes divides by mitosis, giving each daughter cell how many?
46
46 is the full human set, and mitosis never changes the count. Only sperm and egg cells, made by a different kind of division, drop to 23.
Q 08Which type of cell division, unlike mitosis, halves the chromosome number to make sperm and eggs?
Meiosis
Meiosis divides twice in a row, leaving each sex cell with half the usual chromosomes, so that an egg and a sperm restore one full set when they join.
Q 09Which stage of mitosis, used by labs to photograph chromosomes, lines them up across the middle?
Metaphase
Metaphase is the moment every chromosome sits on the cell's equator, tugged equally toward both ends. Chromosomes are easiest to see then, so it is the stage used for medical chromosome tests.
Q 10Which unspecialized cell type in bone marrow keeps dividing by mitosis throughout a person's life?
Stem cells
Stem cells can renew themselves again and again while also producing specialized offspring, which is why a bone marrow transplant can rebuild a patient's immune system.
Q 11Which cell-cycle stage, once misnamed the 'resting phase', takes up most of a typical cell's life?
Interphase
Interphase takes up about 90 percent of a cell's life, and it is anything but restful: the cell grows, does its everyday work and copies all of its DNA.
Q 12In which stage of mitosis do chromatids form V shapes as spindle fibers drag them to opposite poles?
Anaphase
Anaphase is the moment the sister chromatids finally let go of each other. Each is towed by a single attachment point, so its arms trail behind like streamers.
Q 13In which stage of mitosis do chromosomes first become visible as the nucleolus fades from view?
Prophase
Prophase is when loose DNA coils into compact chromosomes that can be moved without tangling. Before then, even a good light microscope shows only a grainy nucleus.
Q 21Which loose form of DNA, named from the Greek for 'color', fills the nucleus between cell divisions?
Chromatin
Chromatin earned its name by soaking up laboratory dyes so readily. Only when a cell gets ready to divide does it bundle up into separate, countable chromosomes.
Q 22Which German biologist coined the word 'mitosis' after staining dividing salamander cells?
Walther Flemming
Walther Flemming published his findings in 1882 but had never come across Mendel's work, so two decades passed before anyone grasped what his carefully shared-out chromosomes meant for heredity.
Q 23Which paired cylinders sit at an animal cell's spindle poles but are absent from flowering plants?
Centrioles
Q 14In which stage of mitosis does a new membrane wrap each set of chromosomes as they begin to uncoil?
Telophase
Telophase undoes the opening moves of mitosis: the chromosomes relax back into loose DNA, the spindle is dismantled and each new nucleus regains its nucleolus.
Q 15Which process, not counted as a stage of mitosis, divides the cytoplasm to complete cell division?
Cytokinesis
Cytokinesis usually overlaps the last moments of mitosis, but it can be skipped: some fungi and slime molds divide their nuclei again and again inside one giant cell.
Q 16Rigid walls cannot pinch inward after mitosis, so plants divide by building which structure instead?
Cell plate
A cell plate starts as a row of tiny sacs in the center and spreads outward until it meets the side walls, becoming the new wall between the daughter cells.
Q 17Which indentation, tightened like a drawstring, pinches an animal cell apart after mitosis?
Cleavage furrow
The cleavage furrow deepens as a ring of protein contracts beneath it, driven by the same pair of proteins that power muscles, until the cell is squeezed apart at the waist.
Q 18Which pinched-in region of a chromosome holds its sister chromatids together during mitosis?
Centromere
The centromere is the narrow waist that gives a duplicated chromosome its familiar X shape, and it is also where the spindle fibers get their grip.
Q 19Bacteria have no nucleus, so instead of mitosis they copy themselves by which simpler process?
Binary fission
Binary fission can be astonishingly quick: with no nucleus or spindle to organize, E. coli can double its numbers in as little as 20 minutes.
Q 20Mitosis builds a whole human body from which single cell, formed when a sperm meets an egg?
Zygote
The zygote divides again and again by mitosis, and its descendants go on to specialize into the hundreds of kinds of cell in an adult body.
Centrioles help organize the spindle in animal cells, yet flowering plants and conifers carry out mitosis perfectly well with none at all, so they cannot be essential.
Q 24Which term names the number and look of a cell's chromosomes, as photographed in mid-mitosis?
Karyotype
A karyotype test lines the chromosomes up in matched pairs by size, letting doctors spot an extra or missing one, such as the third copy of chromosome 21 in Down syndrome.
Q 25Which structure breaks apart early in animal mitosis so spindle fibers can reach the chromosomes?
Nuclear envelope
The nuclear envelope has to go because an animal cell's spindle forms outside the nucleus. Yeasts do it differently, keeping the nucleus sealed and building the spindle inside.
Q 26In which part of the cell cycle, before mitosis rather than during it, does a cell copy its DNA?
S phase
S phase stands for synthesis: every chromosome is duplicated just once, and the twin strands stay joined together until mitosis pulls them apart.
Q 27Which tiny freshwater relative of jellyfish clones itself by growing a bud through mitosis?
Hydra
Hydra can sprout a new bud every two days when well fed, and because its cells are constantly renewed it shows no sign of growing old.
Q 28Which programmed cell death, from the Greek for 'falling off', removes cells whose mitosis fails?
Apoptosis
Apoptosis is a tidy self-destruct routine, and a busy one: an adult body retires tens of billions of cells this way every day, with mitosis supplying the replacements.
Q 29Most animal cells, normally flat or stretched, pull themselves into which shape as mitosis begins?
A sphere
A sphere gives the spindle room to assemble and capture every chromosome. Cells that are prevented from rounding up tend to build faulty spindles.
Q 30Which protective chromosome caps shorten with each division until a normal cell can divide no more?
Telomeres
Telomeres work like a countdown clock, allowing normal human cells roughly 40 to 60 divisions. Most cancer cells cheat by switching on an enzyme that rebuilds them.