Question

Pluricellular organisms are formed through serial mitosis. Would this formation be possible if each cell produced by mitosis was identical to its parent cells? How did evolution solve that problem?

Answer 1

There are two modes of cellular division, mitosis or equational division and meiosis or reductional division. Whereas mitosis gives rise to true copies of parent cells into daughter cells, meiosis gives rise to recombinant offsprings. However, replication and division of DNA takes place in both cases.

Here, it is important to note that although pluricellular organisms arise due to serial mitotic division, faulty replication of DNA often gives rise to mutation in the daughter cells, hence variation. Thus, although sexual reproduction is absent in this case, genetic variation still exists and hence evolution constantly takes place.