Question

1. Why is it necessary for the daughter cells of meiosis to result in 23 chromosomes, rather than 46? 2. A friend asks you the question, "Why is sexual reproduction (meiosis) evolutionarily significant?" What is your response? Help your classmates by giving them advice on how to improve their answers.

Answer 1

1. Meiosis generally occurs in gonads of an organism.Meiosis results in formation of two cells with half of the chromosome number.Gametes are formed by meiosis .Gametes have half of the chromosome number as compared to somatic cells.Males and females gametes fuse with each other to form a diploid zygote.If chromosome number of gametes is not reduced to   23 ,then resulting zygote will not have 46 chromosomes resulting in formation of abnormal zygote.To maintain the characteristic chromosome number of species in progeny it is necessary that daughter cells of meiosis have 23 chromosome instead of 46.

2. Meiosis is the part of cell division process that takes place in sexual cells and produce for gametes.sexual reproduction generates genetic variation because meiosis randomly shuffles genes across chromosomes and then randomly separates half of those chromosomes into each gametes. These two gametes then randomly combine to form a new individual .

Genetic variation provides evolutionary fitness. Variation that sexual reproduction provides among offspring is very essential for the survival and reproduction of offspring.Mutation also continually reshuffles from one generation to the next when different parents combine their unique genomes .Variation are introduced during meiosis, as well as when the gametes combine in fertilization.