![]() Human male karyotype, courtesy of the Human Genome Project, via Wikipedia.įor the most part, those pairs of chromosomes are identical. Here’s what my karyotype probably looks like: You can take pictures of these chromosomes, and this picture is called a karyotype. Humans are diploid, which means that we have two ( di) copies of each chromosome ( ploid). For example, wheat is hexaploid which means that it has six ( hexa) copies of each chromosomes ( ploid). These chromosomes live in a huge organelle called the nucleus, in the center of the cell.Ī ploidy number is a fancy way of saying that an organism has a certain number of chromosomes. In our cells, our genome exists as chunks of protein and DNA known as chromosomes. So first off let’s discuss sex determination, the difference between diploid and haploid, and what that means for our insect friends. So let’s go through what it means to be haplodiploid, and then we’ll talk about why a fully functional organism can be haploid. For example, female bees produce male clones and these clones can never have sons. So first off, bee genetics are weird to the point where they’re almost nonsensical. It’s a story best told in pictures, so this will be a very picture intensive post. I didn’t fully understand what much of this stuff meant until I started taking upper level biochemistry classes, and actually saw some of this stuff for myself. Tonight, we’re going to go a lot deeper into that topic.Ī lot of the stuff in this post is a really hard concept to wrap your head around, and I admit that it took me awhile to get this back when I took genetics. You can see a lot of these differences pretty easily, and Nancy hit on this in the post Is That Bug a Boy or a Girl. Most organisms, including humans, have to be capable of producing two different types of organisms from the same set of genes. In any organism, the males and females are going to be different by definition. This is called haplodiploidy, where males only have half the chromosomes of females. Workers are produced sexually from fertilized eggs. ![]() Drones are a type of clone, because they’re produced asexually from unfertilized eggs. ![]() It’s important to note that it’s the male drones, and not workers who are the clones. Tonight’s question comes from Farhad, who emailed us and asked how bees can be clones. But how this can happen? Can you explain? I read in a book that worker bees are clones.
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