| Asexual reproduction occurs in many types of
organisms, but humans are unable to carry it out. Asexual reproduction is a way to
take one's own genetic information and pass it on to a new individual-- so that new
individual only has the genetic information from the one parent. There is no mixing
up of genetic information-- the new individual is exactly like the parent... in essence, a
clone. Mitosis is used to make a new cell that will divide through more mitosis to
make the new, identical-to-the-parent individual. If you
watched or read Jurassic Park, you heard that the big problem that occurred (when the
dinosaurs were able to reproduce) was because the missing dinosaur genes were filled in
with frog genes. And many species of frogs are capable of asexual reproduction
(called parthenogenesis, but you don't have to know that, it is just that they used that
term in the movie & book). So, the dinosaurs were capable of asexual
reproduction... and even though all were female, they underwent a population explosion on
the island. |
Most people think of this as being the same thing
as sexual intercourse-- but in humans, sexual intercourse is just the method used for
sexual reproduction. And most organisms in our world do not use internal
fertilization to carry out sexual reproduction. Sexual
reproduction is a way to produce a new generation of individuals with unique
characteristics from the previous generation. It is a way of taking the genetic
information of the two parents and jumbling it up to make a new combination of genes in a
new individual. We have studied inheritance, but now we are stepping back to study
how the genes get all mixed up.
For sexual reproduction, you have to be able to make gametes.
The gametes (sperm and egg) from two individuals come together to make the next
generation. They can come together through internal fertilization like they do in
humans or through other, external means. But the making of the gametes occurs
through meiosis. |
