Why does meiosis produce four haploid cells?

1 Answer
Jan 6, 2016

The way I think about it is that you have two diploid cells that split their genetic information (with bits of twists and turns) into four cells (namely, haploids) that contains half as much information as the diploid cells.

Explanation:

You can also think of this in terms of the processes that occur, namely, meiosis I and meiosis II. We have nuclear cell divisions happening twice and we start with two diploid cells. Thus, we end up with four. Intuitively, this is quite convenient as the cells continue towards fusing to form a zygote.