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parent cell

American  
[pair-uhnt sel] / ˈpɛər ənt ˈsɛl /

noun

  • parent cells
    plural
  1. Biology. mother cell.


parent cell Scientific  
/ pâr′ənt /
  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


Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

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.

From Science Daily ● May 13, 2024

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.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 28, 2024

Sometimes cell division is interrupted midstream, and the replicated DNA gets stuck in the parent cell instead of being divided between daughter cells.

From Science Magazine ● Aug. 23, 2023

The micronuclei undergo meiosis, resulting in four haploid micronuclei in each parent cell.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

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