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The list of organisms by chromosome count describes ploidy or numbers of chromosomes in the cells of various plants, animals, protists, and other living organisms.This number, along with the visual appearance of the chromosome, is known as the karyotype, [1] [2] [3] and can be found by looking at the chromosomes through a microscope.
Human diploid cells have 46 chromosomes (the somatic number, 2n) and human haploid gametes (egg and sperm) have 23 chromosomes (n). Retroviruses that contain two copies of their RNA genome in each viral particle are also said to be diploid. Examples include human foamy virus, human T-lymphotropic virus, and HIV. [30]
Polyploidy occurs in some tissues of animals that are otherwise diploid, such as human muscle tissues. [45] This is known as endopolyploidy. Species whose cells do not have nuclei, that is, prokaryotes, may be polyploid, as seen in the large bacterium Epulopiscium fishelsoni. [46] Hence ploidy is defined with respect to a cell.
Like most animals, humans are a diploid and eukaryotic species. Each somatic cell has two sets of 23 chromosomes , each set received from one parent; gametes have only one set of chromosomes, which is a mixture of the two parental sets.
This represents the size of a composite genome based on data from multiple individuals but it is a good indication of the typical amount of DNA in a haploid set of chromosomes because the Y chromosome is quite small. [7] Most human cells are diploid so they contain twice as much DNA (~6.2 billion base pairs).
Overview of chromatides' and chromosomes' distribution within the mitotic and meiotic cycle of a male human cell. Meiosis occurs in all animals and plants. The result, the production of gametes with half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell, is the same, but the detailed process is different. In animals, meiosis produces gametes directly.
Asexually reproducing species have one set of chromosomes that are the same in all body cells. However, asexual species can be either haploid or diploid. Sexually reproducing species have somatic cells (body cells) that are diploid [2n], having two sets of chromosomes (23 pairs in humans), one set from the mother and one from the father.
A large number of species have the chromosomes in their somatic cells arranged in fours ("tetraploid") or even sixes ("hexaploid"). Thus, they can have diploid or even triploid germline cells. An example of this is the modern cultivated species of wheat, Triticum aestivum L., a hexaploid species whose somatic cells contain six copies of every ...