Meiosis is the type of cell division where chromosome number is reduced to half. Meiosis is essential for sexual reproduction in plants, animals, fungi as well as human beings. Meiosis is also called reductional division because chromosome reduces to half, thus changing diploid set to haploid ones.
Meiosis is divided into two phases or parts, meiosis I and meiosis II but before entering meiosis, cell first make pre- preparation, therefore a stage called interphase occurs before proceeding to meiosis.
Interphase: It is again divided into two stages, the first stage is the G1 phase or growth 1 phase where protein in a cell are synthesized rapidly. Second is the S phase or synthetic phase where genetic material in a cell undergoes replication. In case of mitosis there is one more stage called Growth 2 phase or G2 phase but this phase is absent in meiosis. After interphase, meiosis begins, meiosis I starts first and then Meiosis 2.
1. Meiosis I: in this stage the complete work of genetic recombination and exchange of genetic material takes place. Different events and steps that clarify the process are:
Before the beginning of meiosis II, cell first enters the resting stage also called interkinesis.
Picture Reference: biology- pictures blogspot.com
At these stages, mostly division of cell or it can be said that cell undergoes changes where daughter cell will have a single chromatid.
Therefore after this few steps meiosis is completed with division of cell into four new daughter cells. This way all these formed daughter cells have a single chromatid.
Meiosis has great importance in living organism mostly plants, animals and human. Since diploid cell becomes haploid at the end of meiosis, therefore this maintains the chromosome number by keeping any organism diploid generation after generation. Moreover, the crossing over that takes place brings new combination in the gene and most importantly, repairing of any segment of incorrect portion is wonderfully facilitated by the process of meiosis. Therefore, all this results in variation due to which offspring with some of the unique character, both phenotipically and genotipically are produced. Hence, meiosis is important and helps in progress of life.
Read More about the Difference between Mitosis and Meiosis
Assignment Writing Help
Engineering Assignment Services
Do My Assignment Help
Write My Essay Services