What is the biological role of sex?

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Hussain Sheikh                                                November 7th 2003

What is the biological role of sex?

It is common knowledge that all organisms reproduce in one way or another. Bacteria can reproduce asexually by binary fission, during which a bacteria splits in two to give two offspring. Plants can reproduce both asexually, by self-fertilisation, or sexually, using wind or insect pollination. Whereas all mammals, like humans, reproduce sexually. Yet, what is reproduction? Why do all organisms reproduce? And what is the biological role of sex?

Reproduction is ‘the production of a new generation of individuals of the same species’ (Taylor et al, 1998). Every generation in a species produces offspring to form the next generation. This ensures not only that the current genetic information is passed down onto the next generation, but also that there are also new individuals to actually make up the next generation. If organisms did not produce offspring, their species would become extinct.

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A zygote is formed when the sperm cell from a human male and the ovum from a human female meet in the fallopian tubes inside the female body. The sperm cells and ova are different to all the other cells in the human body; they contain only 23 chromosomes (half the number of the full complement of chromosomes). Why is it that the sex cells only contain 23 chromosomes? This is because a normal cell contains 46 chromosomes. If the sex cells sheltered this many chromosomes, when they came to fuse in the fallopian tubes, the resulting zygote would ...

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