Question

At the time of fertilization in humans, two gametes, each containing a unique combination of alleles, fuse to form a diploid offspring. if you ignore crossing over, a single person can produce gametes with roughly how many different chromosome combinations

Answer 1

A human has 23 chromosome pairs (hence a total of 46 chromosomes).  A gamete is haploid (n), hence has 23 total chromosomes. The number of combination of chromosomes that can make a gamete is calculated   as follows; 2^23 = 8, 388, 608. This is without considering genetic recombination.

Answer 2

A single person can produce gametes with 8 million chromosomal combinations roughly without considering the crossing over of chromosome combinations.

Further Explanation:

As the chromosomal combination which gives rise to new characteristics occurs in gametes, meiosis plays a vital role. The germ cells undergo meiosis to produce an egg or sperm cell with haploid number of chromosomes. Somatic cells contain diploid number of chromosomes (46) whereas gametes contain twenty three pairs of chromosomes which are haploid in number. During meiosis, the diploid number of chromosomes is reduced to half because during fertilization each parent contributes half the number of chromosomes to produce a diploid offspring.

As there are twenty three pairs of chromosome the possibility of the genetic combinations can be given as  .

The number of chromosome combinations can be calculated as follows,

 

Therefore, each gamete can produce approximately 8 million chromosomal combinations.

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Answer Details:

Grade: High School

Subject: Biology

Chapter: Genetic Biology

Keywords:

Gametes, chromosomes, diploid, haploid, somatic cell, germ cell, fertilization, meiosis, chromosomal combinations, twenty three pairs, 46 chromosomes.