Meiosis

Meiosis is a slightly different process. It is used to create the gametes,these are the sperm or eggs, used in sexual reproduction. The offspring produced during sexual reproduction have characteristics, selected from those of the parents.

The main difference in meiosis as compared to mitosis is that the new cells have half the number of chromosomes as the diploid 'parent' cell. One chromosome comes from each homologous pair of chromosomes. So these offspring cells are haploid not diploid.

The following list summarises the slightly more complicated events of…