Question

A woman produces an egg with 24 chromosomes, including 2 copies of chromosome 21. If the egg is fertilized by a normal sperm, the zygote will have _____ chromosomes.

Answer 1

Answer:

47

Explanation:

We all know that gametes like egg cell and sperm have haploid set of chromosomes but here as per this question she has produced 2 copies of chromosome 21. For the sake of maintaining haploidy, she was supposed to have only a single copy of chromosome 21 as a result of which her egg cell was supposed to have 23 chromosomes not 24.

But, this is a case of non dis-junction. Also, in a normal sperm there are no such copies of any chromosome i.e. there is a haploid set of chromosomes. It means that sperm must be having only 23 chromosomes. So we can easily infer that when the egg cell and sperm will fuse, the zygote will have 47 chromosomes (24 from egg cell and 23 from sperm).