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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.
All normal diploid individuals have some small fraction of cells that display polyploidy. 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.
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).
So, humans have two sets of 23 chromosomes in each cell that contains a nucleus. One set of 23 chromosomes (n) is from the mother (22 autosomes, 1 sex chromosome (X only)) and one set of 23 chromosomes (n) is from the father (22 autosomes, 1 sex chromosome (X or Y)). Ultimately, this means that humans are diploid (2n) organisms. [2]
A monoploid has only one set of chromosomes, and the term is usually only applied to cells or organisms that are normally diploid. Males of bees and other Hymenoptera , for example, are monoploid. Unlike animals, plants and multicellular algae have life cycles with two alternating multicellular generations .
The gametes of diploid organisms contain only single unpaired chromosomes and are called haploid. Each pair of chromosomes comprises one chromosome inherited from the father and one inherited from the mother. In humans, somatic cells contain 46 chromosomes organized into 23 pairs. By contrast, gametes of diploid organisms contain only half as ...
An image of the 46 chromosomes making up the diploid genome of a human male (the mitochondrial chromosomes are not shown). In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. [1] It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses).
A diploid organism is heterozygous at a gene locus when its cells contain two different alleles (one wild-type allele and one mutant allele) of a gene. [3] The cell or organism is called a heterozygote specifically for the allele in question, and therefore, heterozygosity refers to a specific genotype. Heterozygous genotypes are represented by ...