the.com/gamete
half a recipe for a person, gambling everything on finding its other half
means A mature reproductive cell — like a sperm or egg — that carries half the genetic material and fuses with another to form a new organism.
from From Greek 'gametē' meaning 'wife' and 'gametēs' meaning 'husband,' both rooted in 'gamein,' to marry, and 'gamos,' marriage — the same root that gives us 'monogamy' and 'bigamy.' The term was lifted into biology in the 19th century by the botanist Eduard Strasburger, casting the union of two cells as a kind of cellular wedding.
- chromosome count
- carries exactly half your DNA, ready to merge
- size gap
- egg dwarfs sperm by ten million times in volume
- two types
- sperm sprints, egg waits and chooses
- made fresh
- sperm produced constantly, eggs counted at birth
- meiosis origin
- forged by a cell splitting its genome in half
human sperm cell — male reproductive cell containing 23 chromosomes, produced continuously from puberty onward
human egg cell — female reproductive cell containing 23 chromosomes, one released per menstrual cycle
pollen grain — male gamete of flowering plants, carries sperm nucleus for fertilization
moss spore — haploid reproductive cell in bryophytes that develops into gametophyte generation