How does meiosis create genetic diversity?
2 Answers
The crossing over of genes in prophase 1 can allow for a greater variation in outcome possibilities and the law of independent assortment states that genes are inherited separately from each other.
Explanation:
Meiosis is basically the process of creating gametes for use in reproduction. In that process, chromosomes are replicated and split, generating probabilities for possible offspring.
There are two ways meiosis causes genetic diversity:
- recombination in prophase (meiosis I)
- reducing the number of chromosomes to half
Explanation:
A complete description about meiosis can be found here
In short, meiosis is a reductional division cabaple of reducing the DNA content to half by separating half the number of chromosomes in one cell called a gamete.
Two factors which cause genetic diversity are as follows:
#1.# Recombination Happens in prophase I, during which the sister chromatids cross over and overlaps where exchange of DNA fragments in the cell occurs.This leads to large number of different combination of genes, which were not present in the parents. See the image below.
#2.# Fertilization of gametes from parents happens when the gametes from two parents fuse with each other and form an embryo. This embryo then becomes a new individual.Due to the fact that genetic material comes from two different individuals, this process adds to the genetic variation in the offspring. See the image below.
Both of the above points lead to genetic diversity in the population of organism.
