Ploidy

ploy•dee (noun)
the number of copies of chromosomes contained in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells.
Origin: Greek (ploos = fold; pliody = # of folds => # of copies)

Humans are diploid (di = 2, ploid = copies of chromosomes; diploid = has two copies have 2 copies of each chromosome), meaning in that 98% of human cells there exist two copies of each of the 23 chromosomes, totalling 46. However, gametes are haploid (hap = half, ploid = copies of chromosomes; haploid = one copy of each chromosome), and so each sperm and egg cell only has 23 chromosomes. When a sperm cell and egg cell meet, they undergo plasmogamy followed by karyogamy, which fuses the two haploid nuclei to produce the diploid nucleus of the embryo.

Organisms are usually sensitive to ploidy; an incorrect ploidy usually results in the death of the individual. However, plants have strange tolerances to ploidy, and in fact some species flourish well with abnormal ploidy. For example, strawberries are commonly octoploid (each strawberry cell has eight copies of each chromosome in its nucleus).

~~~~~~~~~~

BONUS POST!

Yay! Bonus post! I wanted to update you on my midterm from this morning, so here it is!

IT WENT SURPRISINGLY WELL! For none of the questions did I go WHHHHHHHAAAAAAATTTTTTT????????!?!?!?!?!!!!!!? It was rather straightforwards and I managed to complete it with 5 mins to look it over, so it was not too bad. I felt good about the midterm, but this fact worries me because whenever I feel that I did well on a test/found it easy, I always fail miserably, so we'll see how I did when I get it back..... I was slightly frustrated because I found a mistake that threw off two of my answers (multiple part questions, ARG!) but didn't have time to fix it before he announced "put down your writing utensils" =S Oh well, as long as I get ~75% I'll be content.

Anyways, have a good weekend Clay!
Chat soon,
~Tim~

PS - This means you no longer have to find a use for the word karyogamy! (although this also means that you need to find a use for the word ploidy, so I'm not sure if it helped or not....) I know it is difficult to find uses for scientific terms in everyday vernacular, so I will also accept the use of haploid or diploid instead of ploidy if you can't seems to make it work...