What type of cell division produces sex cells?

The process that produces sex cells, or gametes, is meiosis. This specialized form of cell division occurs in reproductive organs and results in the formation of sperm and eggs in animals. During meiosis, a single diploid cell undergoes two consecutive divisions, ultimately leading to four haploid cells, each containing half the genetic material of the original cell. This reduction in chromosome number is crucial for sexual reproduction, as it ensures that when a sperm fertilizes an egg, the resulting zygote has the correct diploid number of chromosomes.

Mitosis, in contrast, is a process that leads to the production of two identical daughter cells for growth and repair, maintaining the same chromosome number. Binary fission is a method of asexual reproduction found in prokaryotes, where a single organism divides into two identical organisms. Transcription, on the other hand, is a process in which genetic information from DNA is copied into messenger RNA and does not involve cell division at all. This clarifies why meiosis, rather than any of these other processes, is specifically responsible for the production of sex cells.