Genetic recombination what is

That crossing over results in the shuffling of genetic material, much as the very gentle shuffling of a deck of cards would do. And it's important because it's one of the sources of genetic variation that we see among offspring of parents.

Elaine A. Ostrander, Ph. Featured Content. During the alignment, the arms of the chromosomes can overlap and temporarily fuse, causing a crossover. Crossovers result in recombination and the exchange of genetic material between the maternal and paternal chromosomes. As a result, offspring can have different combinations of genes than their parents.

Genes that are located farther apart on the same chromosome have a greater likelihood of undergoing recombination, which means they have a greater recombination frequency. Recombination in meiosis. Further Exploration Concept Links for further exploration meiosis DNA chromosome gene linkage principle of independent assortment eukaryote nucleus gamete haploid recombination frequency Principles of Inheritance.

So during synapsis, the homologous chromosomes will get a little bit closer to each other. Something like that. And at a certain spot, they might actually cross over or overlap. So I'm gonna circle that spot. And that's called the chiasma. And in some cases, another thing happens. This protein complex that resembles something like a railroad track forms. We'll see in a minute why. And this is called the synaptonemal complex. You can actually see the word synapse in there because this happens during synapsis.

So we've formed the synaptonemal complex and with the help of the synaptonemal complex, these two chromatids, the ones that are crossing over, will actually swap material downward of that point. So we're gonna get something that looks like that. Look at how the purple chromosome now has some blue over there. And look at how the blue chromosome now has some purple over there. So what we just described, this process by which the two chromosomes swap information is called crossing over.

Or, another way to say this, is genetic recombination. And let's see why this is called genetic recombination. So we're gonna fast forward to the end of meiosis to where the chromosomes get split into two and all the chromatids get separated into different gametes.

And I want to pause and remind you that everything we're describing that's happening to this pair of chromosomes is also happening to all the other 22 pairs of homologous chromosomes. But anyway, so now let's put each one of the chromatids in a different gamete. And look at how we get four different gametes. And we can call these two, gametes recombinant.

And we're calling them recombinant because they have a combination of alleles that's new. We haven't had this combination of alleles, even in a parent. And just to clarify things, let's see what the gametes would look like if crossing over did not happen.

So let's go back to our original chromosomes.