EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -If people reproduced by taking 23 pairs of chromosomes from the mother and 23 pairs of chromosomes from the father, the baby would have too many chromosomes (46 pairs). So eggs and sperm carry only half the usual number of chromosomes-just 23 unpaired chromosomes, carrying one version of each gene.

Detailed explanation-2: -The amount of DNA per spermatozoon of the 21 fertile males is very constant and uniform within each individual and among the 21 different individuals. The mean amount of DNA in arbitrary units is 1.22±0.005 per sperm and is approximately one-half that of human somatic cells which is 2.66±0.05.

Detailed explanation-3: -Each sperm cell contains half the father’s DNA. But it’s not identical from sperm to sperm because each man is a mixture of the genetic material from his parents, and each time a slightly different assortment of that full DNA set gets divided to go into a sperm.

Detailed explanation-4: -Both the egg and sperm cells are produced by Meiosis, which is a special type of cell division, where the cells only have half the number of chromosomes, one from each pair. When the process of Meiosis is complete, 4 cells are formed = eggs or sperm.