Meiosis, it's that easy!!!

I know that almost everyone has never heard of Meiosis before we learned about it in science class. Well, Meiosis is not very difficult if you read my blog entry you will find it quite easy to understand.

Meiosis is one of the basic units of life. Almost everyone knows that humans have half the number of body cells (46) than they do sex cells (23), well Meiosis produces those sex cells. Here, I will walk you through the steps of Meiosis. Before Meiosis starts each chromosome in the parents cell is copied. Next, the chromosome pairs line up in the middle of the cell. After that, the pairs split and go to different sides of the cell. Then, the two cells end up having half the number of chromosomes then what they started with. This first process is known as Meiosis one. This next process I will show you is known as Meiosis two. The chromosomes move to the center of the cell again. Later on, it splits and moves to opposite sides of the cell. Finally, four sex cells are produced.

I have learned many interesting facts while researching Meiosis, they are....

1. As I have previously stated humans have a total amount of 46 chromosomes an 23 sex cells, therefore there are eight million different gametes ( a reproductive cell having a single set of chromosomes) in a single cell.

Comment: When I read this it immediately caught my attention because I saw the number eight million gametes in a single cell and i thought that was truly incredible.

2. Genes are made up of DNA and DNA replication in meiosis passes on traits from parents to their offspring.

Comment: I didn't know that genes, DNA, and meiosis worked that much together just to make up a human and their traits.

3. There is about 64 trillion different offspring that can be created by a man and a woman.

Comment: WOW!!!! There were 64 trillion different ways I could have looked. This makes me wonder about what I could have looked like and it makes me think about Punnett Squares and recessive and dominant genes.

To learn more about Meiosis visit this website...

www.brown.edu/Courses/BI0032/gentherp/genIB2.html