AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -What is the law of independent assortment? Mendel’s law of independent assortment states that the alleles of two (or more) different genes get sorted into gametes independently of one another. In other words, the allele a gamete receives for one gene does not influence the allele received for another gene.

Detailed explanation-2: -Meiosis is important for creating genomic diversity in a species. It accomplishes this primarily through 2 processes: independent assortment and crossing over (recombination).

Detailed explanation-3: -Independent assortment produces new combinations of alleles. In meiosis I, crossing over during prophase and independent assortment during anaphase creates sets of chromosomes with new combinations of alleles. Genetic variation is also introduced by random fertilization of the gametes produced by meiosis.

Detailed explanation-4: -Genetic variation can be caused by mutation (which can create entirely new alleles in a population), random mating, random fertilization, and recombination between homologous chromosomes during meiosis (which reshuffles alleles within an organism’s offspring).