Why Is Meiosis Important To Living Things?

Question

Why Is Meiosis Important To Living Things?

2 Answers

Answer Question

Answer 1

In biology, meiosis is a type of cell division. It's really important to living things, as it's crucial to reproduction and the continuation of a species.

What Does Meiosis Actually Do?
The process of meiosis reduces the number of chromosomes by half, so that when the male's chromosomes meet the female's chromosomes, there will still be the right amount of chromosomes in total.

Meiosis In Human Biology

Humans have 46 body chromosomes and 23 sex chromosomes. The sex chromosomes are what we get from meiosis, and are known as "diploids", which means that they come in pairs.

Essentially, this means that meiosis organizes our 46 chromosomes into 23 sets of two.

In order to reproduce, one chromosome of each pair is put forward by both the man and the woman, to create unique genetic material.

Answer 2

Meiosis is important to living things because it ensures recombination of the parental chromosomes, called crossing over, where the homologous chromosomes exchange genetic material.

This ensures that every individual is genetically unique. Meiosis also halves the chromosome number so that when egg and sperm unite the full (diploid no.) is restored.