A fruit fly has four pairs of chromosomes in its cells. at meiosis, how many different combinations of maternal and paternal chromosomes are possible in the gametes?

Biology · High School · Mon Jan 18 2021

Answered on

Answer: Using the law of independent assortment, we can calculate that there are 16 possible combinations of gametes. 

You can calculate this by doing:

(2)⁴ 

Note that this only describes the maternal/paternal combinations. Due to crossing over, there are endless possibilities in terms of the genotype of these gametes.