The details of the cell cycle may vary among different types of cells, however, certain requirements are universal.
Most cells also double their mass and duplicate all their cytoplasmic organelles in each cycle.
Thus, a complex set of nuclear and cytoplasmic events must be coordinated. In this lecture we'll study how this coordination comes about. The General Strategy of the Cell Cycle. For a typical mammalian cell, the cell cycle lasts about 24 hrs. Then, the cell seems to pause at metaphase, in which the duplicated chromosomes are aligned on the mitotic spindle, poised for segregation.