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You've probably heard someone say that your body is mostly water, and most of that water
is found here in the cytoplasm of your cells. I'm Janice Creneti, and I'm here to talk about
what is cytokinesis. Well, cytokinesis is one of the processes that cells have to go
through to make more cells. Cells have to replicate, make more of themselves -- we can
think of it as reproducing. Any time your hair grows, your nails grow, or a cut on your
skin starts to heal all those requires more cells and that requires cytokinesis. Well,
you may be familiar with a phrase called the cell cycle. That's where the cell's actually
beginning to do its reproducing. And the first thing that happens is that the cell's nucleus
actually has to make a copy of itself. But cytokinesis happens after that process is
done. Cytokinesis refers to the actual pinching of the cytoplasm. So we have one cell, the
nucleus is replicated, it's moved to the other side of the cell, and the cytoplasm is going
to move in and in and in and in until that cell actually pinches apart and two new cells
are formed. This happens in animal cells, and in plant cells, something a little bit
different happens because plant cells don't actually pinch apart. They stay stuck to each
other. But cytokinesis, again, is just the process of the cytoplasm pinching so that
two new cells can be formed. I'm Janice Creneti, and this is what is cytokinesis.