What if humans could reproduce through mitosis instead of using meiosis? What would children look like if parents reproduced using mitosis? Would there be any pitfalls in a population of humans if mitosis were the primary method for reproduction?

Question

Marquise May

Biology

31 July, 22:36

What if humans could reproduce through mitosis instead of using meiosis? What would children look like if parents reproduced using mitosis? Would there be any pitfalls in a population of humans if mitosis were the primary method for reproduction?

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Schmidt · Answer 1

Things would be a lot different. Children would be identical to their parents. Mitosis copies a cell and its DNA so the child's DNA would be identical to the parents and they would look exactly alike. It would be like a lot of twins walking around. That is assuming there are no mutations in the mitosis process. I feel like there would be a lot of pitfalls in a population of humans if mitosis were the primary method of reproduction. Everyone will be like a copy of someone else and there will be no room for differences. This would cause a lot of problems with the population because it would be so much different than it is now. Everyone would asexually reproduce and there would be less sexual reproduction. This would probably lead to many problems that I can't even think of.

Sorry I can't explain it better because i'm only in 8'th grade.