A gamete is a sex cell. It is a reproductive cell that would unite during sexual mating. A male cell, which is called a sperm, would unite with a female cell, which is called an egg, or ova. This is done during sexual production, which would become a zygote, the union of a male and female gamete.
A gamete is produced by cell division, and this process is called meiosis. During meiosis, the gamete is considered a haploid. A haploid means having only one set of chromosomes. Upon sexual production, when the male gamete and the female gamete become a zygote, the haploid would now become a diploid. A diploid means having two sets of chromosomes.
A gene is the basic physical and functional unit of heredity. Genes, which are made up of DNA, act as instructions to make molecules called proteins. In humans, genes vary in size from a few hundred DNA bases to more than 2 million bases. The Human Genome Project has estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes.
Every person has two copies of each gene, one inherited from each parent. Most genes are the same in all people, but a small number of genes (less than 1 percent of the total) are slightly different between people. Alleles are forms of the same gene with small differences in their sequence of DNA bases. These small differences contribute to each person’s unique physical features.Gametes are the male and female sex cells: sperm-male, ovum(egg)-female.
