parent cell

1. A cell that is the source of other cells, as a cell that divides to produce two or more daughter cells, or a stem cell that is a progenitor of other cells or is the first in a line of developing cells.

2. Also called mother cell

Example Sentences

"So they're operating differently even though it was the same parent cell. You had the same entity become two different entities from two different viruses," said Cristina Howard-Varona, a research scientist in microbiology at The Ohio State University and the first author of the study.

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During mitosis, the parent cell will duplicate its chromosomes in order to pass down the genetic material to the daughter cells.

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The sister chromatids then need to be evenly split over the two daughter cells to ensure that each daughter cell is an exact copy of the parent cell.

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Yet in that time, only about 30 minutes is spent on the critical orchestration of mitosis, when chromosomes are carefully segregated from one parent cell to the next generation of two daughter cells.

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Importantly, they are critical for cell division, ensuring that two new cells can be born from a parent cell.

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