Question

The somatic cells of a fruit fly contain 8 chromosomes. How many chromosomes are in the sex cells of a fruit fly?

Answer 1

Hint: Somatic cells contain chromosomal-arranged DNA. If there are chromosomes arranged in pairs in a somatic cell, it is considered a diploid and the organism is considered a diploid organism. One chromosome inherited from one parent and one inherited from the other consists of each pair of chromosomes.

Complete answer:
Somatic cells become diploid, meaning that they also have two chromosome sets, one from the mother and one comes from the father. Somatic cells possess chromosomal-arranged DNA.
Eight chromosomes are found in the somatic cells in fruit flies, suggesting they have 2 pairs of four chromosomes.
Mitosis ensures that each cell generated executes the correct functions since they are similar to the original cell. The mechanism by which sex cells are formed is meiosis. There are haploid sex cells, meaning they have one pair of chromosomes.
One group of four chromosomes comprises the reproductive cells of fruit flies.
Due to the migration of homologous chromosomes to opposite ends during anaphase I, Meiosis I requires chromosome number reduced to half.
Each gamete would have half of the chromosome numbers during Meiosis II as those of the somatic cells, i.e. 4 chromosomes in total.

Note: In somatic cells, mitosis occurs; this means it occurs in all cell types which are not involved in the formation of gametes.
A clone of every chromosome is produced prior to each mitotic division; hence a full collection of chromosomes is contained in the nucleus of each new cell after division.