Meiosis is a term which not everyone knows about yet it is an important term in biology without which reproduction is not possible. So in this article, we are going to answer the question what is meiosis? In simple words, meiosis is basically a cell division but the process is different from the normal cell division because in meiosis, the chromosomes in the parent cell are reduced by half and the process produces four gamete cell. The process happens in both male and female of all the species who reproduces sexually. After the egg and the sperm fuses, the number of chromosomes is restored to its original number as the number of chromosomes of egg and sperm add up to each other.

Talking about the process of Meiosis, the process starts a diploid parent cell. A diploid cell is a cell which has two copies of each chromosome and the cell then goes under a single round of DNA replication. Once the DNA has been replicated, the process is followed by nuclear division twice. In end of the process, the result is that there are four daughter cells which are created and these daughter cells are haploid in nature. A haploid cell is one which contains half of the chromosomes of what was there in thediploid parent cell. So for example, if the parent cell had 48 chromosomes, the new cell would have 24 chromosomes. In addition to this, these 24 chromosomes in theegg would add up with 24 chromosomes of sperm and the end result of reproduction cycle would be a cell with 48 chromosomes.

The main reason why nature behaves this way is to maintain the diversity pool. This is also the reason why the offspring of two parents have the characteristic features of both its parents.