I\'ve recently read a little on Wikipedia about genetics, but I can\'t find a di

Question

I've recently read a little on Wikipedia about genetics, but I can't find a direct answer to this question.

My rough understanding is this:

What I can't find an answer to though is whether that selection is completely random, such that every chromosome in a gamete has an equally likely chance of being taken from the male parent set and the female parent set.

Another way of putting it, perhaps: Would the range of 100% male parent to 100% female parent chromosome selection in the gamete be a binomial distribution?

Explanation / Answer

Other answers are correct in their own terms, but because of homologous recombination during meiosis, the idea of maternal and paternal chromosomes becomes meaningless. Any chromosome in a gamete will be a mosaic of the maternal and paternal versions. In this sense the chromosome is not the unit of inheritance.

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