Advantages of Alternation of Generations
There are two important evolutionary advantages to the alternation of generations plant life-cycle. Firstly, by forming a haploid gametophyte, there is only one allele for any genetic trait. Thus, all alleles will be expressed because no allele may be masked by a dominant counterpart (there is no counterpart). The benefit of this is that any mutation that causes a lethal, or harmful, trait expression cannot be masked and will cause the gametophyte to die; thus, the trait cannot be passed on to future generations, preserving the strength of the gene pool. Also, crossing-over during meiosis in the formation of spores, and sexual reproduction in the gametophytes, produces genetic diversity, which also inhibits harmful recessive genes from "surfacing" and being expressed.
Read more about this topic: Prothallium
Famous quotes containing the words advantages of, advantages, alternation and/or generations:
“When the manipulations of childhood are a little larceny, they may grow and change with the child into qualities useful and admire in the grown-up world. When they are the futile struggle for love and concern and protection, they may become the warped and ruthless machinations of adults who seek in the advantages of power what they could never win as children.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic circle would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)