Essential Genetics 6th Edition by Daniel Hartl

Exercise 14

The chemical colchicine is a "spindle poison" that interferes with the organization of the spindle. Somatic cells undergoing division in the presence of colchicine arrest at metaphase. Eventually the splitting of the centromeres that is characteristic of anaphase occurs, but cell division does not take place. If a cat cell with a normal diploid complement of 38 chromosomes undergoes one round of the cell cycle in the presence of colchicine, what is the expected number of chromosomes in the resulting cell?