A type of cell division that produces cells with a single set of chromosomes, similar to mitosis but occurring in organisms that are already haploid.
From Greek 'haplous' (single) + 'mitosis' (cell division). The term combines the prefix for 'single' with the biological process of cell division, emerging in early 20th-century cytology.
This word reveals how biologists had to invent new terms as they discovered that different organisms have different ways of dividing cells—some organisms are naturally haploid and divide differently than diploid organisms.
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