BSC 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Sexual Reproduction, Meiosis, Gamete

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Biology - Biological Sciences
• Course: BSC 2010
• Professor: Burleigh John Gordon

Document Summary

How is information transmuted? (passed down with changes) But allowing for some variation: meiosis & fertilization = sexual reproduction. Sexual: not always trying to pass down as much genes as possible because variation is good for survival. Asexual reproduction: the offspring are clones - genetically identical to the parent, prokaryotes - binary fission, single-celled eukaryotes can reproduce by mitosis and cytokinesis, many multicellular eukaryotes can also reproduce by asexual means, example. Aspen trees - clonal growth: really important and evolutionary makes sense. Sexual reproduction: gametes form after meiosis - a process of cell division that reduces genetic material by half. Two gametes make a zygote: fertilization - fusion of gametes, results in offspring different than parents, diploid - cells contain two sets of chromosomes (one from mother, one from father) that occur in homologous pairs = 2n. Entire cell cycle is diploid: haploid - cells contain one set of chromosomes = 1n.