A spermatozoon or an ovum; a cell responsible for transmitting DNA to the next generation.
1When size is irrelevant, other features of a sex cell determine its sex.
2Imagine the world from a sex cell's point of view.
3A sex cell carries one complete set of your genes.
4I mean a sex cell of a different sex.
5Its mission is threefold: to find, recognize, and fuse with a suitable sex cell from the same species.
6And imagine that you're in a population that has zero sexes -everysex cell can fuse with every other.
7If you encounter a sex cell from the same parent, you can go ahead and fuse with it.
9When a sex cell of yours fuses with a regular sex cell, the resulting cell, known as a zygote, will be smaller than usual.
10By contrast, plants don't just rely on specialist sex cells to reproduce.
11The anatomical difference between the sex cells of men and women is extreme.
12This union of the male and female sex cells is called "fertilization."
13But what force can favor making fewer, larger sex cells?
14Most of us are sterile because we even form antibodies to our own sex cells.
15Or, to be more precise, sexes define which sex cells can fuse with each other.
16Among animals, then, there are two types of sex cells, big (eggs) and small (sperm).
Translations for sex cell