Gamete
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Fertilization terminology: gametes, zygotes, haploid, diploid
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Gametes and fertilisation Gender Human body cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nucleus. One of these pairs controls the inheritance of gender - whether offspring are male or female: In males, the two sex chromosomes are different.
A gamete is a haploid cell that fuses with another haploid cell during fertilization ( conception) in organisms that sexually reproduce. In species that produce two. Gamete, sex, or reproductive, cell containing only one set of dissimilar chromosomes, or half the genetic material necessary to form a complete organism (i.e., haploid). Gametes are formed through meiosis (reduction division), in which a germ cell undergoes two fissions, resulting.
In females, the two sex chromosomes are the same. Chromosomes from a female.
Gametes contain one set of genetic information, while body cells contain two sets of genetic information. One of these pairs controls the inheritance of gender - whether offspring are male or female:. Learn More about gamete. So let's just do a blow up of this sperm cell right over here, so a blow up of a sperm cell and I'm not going to draw it to scale, you see the sperm cell is much smaller than the egg cell but just to get a sense, so let me draw the nucleus of this sperm cell, so just like that. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Chromosomes from a male. Activity Revision Map Losing your way? What we see right over here, this is a picture of a sperm cell fusing with an egg cell. So that's a sperm cell and this is an egg cell or we could call this an ovum. And even this scene depicted right over here, this is the end of an epic competition because this sperm cell is one of one of two to three hundred million that is vying for this ovum. So there's two to three hundred million of these characters and they're all vying for this ovum and the one that you see that's about to fuse for it, this is the winner of this incredibly - remember two to three hundred, million to million sperm are trying to get here so this is a major victory and to some degree we should all feel pretty good about ourselves because we are all the by-product of that one in to million sperm cells that won this race getting to our mother's ovum.
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So the sperm cell came from our father and the egg cell, this is all happening inside of our mothers, the egg cell is from our mother. Now, once this happens, let's talk a little bit about the terminology.
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So once these two fuse, or the process of them fusing, we call that fertilization. And it produces a cell that then differentiates into all of the cells of our body, so you can imagine that this is an important process.
So let's make sure that we understand the different terminology, the different words for the different things that are acting in this process. So each of these sex cells, I guess we could say, the sperm cell and the ovum, these are each called gametes. So this right over here is a gamete and the ovum is a gamete, the egg cell is also a gamete. And as we'll see, each gamete has half the number of chromosomes as your body cells or most of the somatic cells of your body so outside of your sex cells that might be in your ovaries or your testes, depending on whether you're male or female, these have half the number so let's dig a little bit deeper into what I mean there.
So let's just do a blow up of this sperm cell right over here, so a blow up of a sperm cell and I'm not going to draw it to scale, you see the sperm cell is much smaller than the egg cell but just to get a sense, so let me draw the nucleus of this sperm cell, so just like that. If we're talking about a human being, and I'm assuming you are a human being, so that might be of interest to you, this will have 23 chromosomes from your father so let's do them.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and for the 23rd one, that's going to be your sex-determining chromosome so if your father contributes an x, you are going to be female, if your father contributes a y, you are going to be male.
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So these are the chromosomes in the male gamete or I guess I should say the gamete that your father's contributing, the sperm. So this is a gamete right over here and that's going to fuse with the egg, the ovum that your mother is contributing and once again, I'm not drawing that to scale. So this is the egg, and let me draw it's nucleus. So that's it's nucleus, once again none of this is drawn to scale.
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And your mother is also going to contribute 23 chromosomes. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and then she will contribute an x chromosome for the sex determining so your sex determining chromosomes are going to be xy, you're going to be male, if this was xx, you're going to be female so this is also a gamete here. So a gamete is the general term for either a sperm or an egg.
Now once these two things are fused, what do we have? Once they're fused, then we're going to have you could say a fertilized egg but we are going to call that a zygote so let me draw that. I'm going to do this in a new color, and I'm running out of space and I want this all to fit on the same screen so I'll draw it not quite at scale and so let me draw the nucleus of the zygote, I'm going to make the nucleus fairly large so that we can focus on the chromosomes in it, once again none of this is drawn to scale.