SSC MTS GK Questions 2026

If gametes carried the full chromosome number, fertilisation would double it in every generation. Meiosis halves the number when gametes are formed, so that the union of two gametes restores the original diploid number and keeps it constant from one generation to the next.

His detailed drawings of the stages are the basis of the account still given in textbooks.

Interphase occupies more than ninety-five per cent of the duration of the cell cycle, because in it the cell must grow to a sufficient size, synthesise proteins and RNA, duplicate its entire DNA and prepare the structures needed for division.

This single difference is the reason meiosis I is called the reduction division. In anaphase I the two homologous chromosomes of each bivalent are pulled to opposite poles, but each of them still consists of two sister chromatids joined at an undivided centromere.

In the zygotene sub-stage of prophase I the two members of each pair of homologous chromosomes come to lie side by side along their whole length, matching point for point, and the structure that forms between them and holds them together is called the synaptonemal complex.

By this sub-stage the homologous chromosomes have already paired in zygotene and are held together as bivalents or tetrads, each made of four chromatids.

Meiosis begins with a single round of DNA replication and is then followed by two successive nuclear divisions. Meiosis I is the reduction division, in which homologous chromosomes separate and the two cells formed already carry half the parental chromosome number.

An animal cell divides its cytoplasm by a cleavage furrow, in which the plasma membrane is pulled inward around the middle until the cell is pinched into two.

Once the chromosomes are aligned on the metaphase plate and every kinetochore is attached to a spindle fibre, the centromere holding the two sister chromatids together splits.

In this stage the condensed chromosomes, each consisting of two sister chromatids, are moved by the spindle fibres until their centromeres lie in one plane across the middle of the cell, known as the metaphase plate or equatorial plate.

In mitosis each centromere splits in anaphase and one chromatid of every chromosome goes to each pole, so the two daughter cells receive exactly the same number of chromosomes as the parent cell had, and exactly the same genetic information.

During this phase the DNA of the cell is copied so that the amount of DNA in the nucleus doubles, while the number of chromosomes remains unchanged because each chromosome now simply consists of two identical sister chromatids joined at the centromere.

Osian, about sixty kilometres north of Jodhpur, has a group of more than a dozen Brahmanical and Jain temples built in sandstone between the eighth and the twelfth century, among them the Sachiya Mata temple and the Mahavira temple, and the richness of its sculpture has earned it the name…

The Hawa Mahal, the five-storeyed screen of pink sandstone on the edge of the City Palace, was built in 1799 for Sawai Pratap Singh to a design by Lal Chand Ustad, and its many latticed windows let the women of the household watch the processions in the street without being…

The Patwon ki Haveli is a cluster of five mansions in the yellow sandstone of Jaisalmer, begun in 1805 by the Jain banker Guman Chand Patwa for his sons, and famous for its carved balconies and jali screens; the Salim Singh ki Haveli and the Nathmal ji ki Haveli stand…

Jaswant Thada stands just below the Mehrangarh fort at Jodhpur and was raised in 1899 in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II; it is built of thin sheets of white marble that glow when the sun falls on them, and it serves as the cremation ground of the later Rathore…

Nathdwara, which means the gate of the Lord, lies in Rajsamand district on the Banas river, and the image of Krishna as Shrinathji, brought from Vrindavan, was installed there in 1672 in the reign of Maharana Raj Singh I; the town is also the home of the Pichhwai paintings made…

The temple of Eklingji at Kailashpuri, a short way north of Udaipur, holds a four-faced image of Shiva in black marble, and the Guhil and Sisodia rulers of Mewar treated him as the real sovereign of the state and themselves as his deputies, a claim repeated in their inscriptions.

Bundi, the Hara Chauhan capital in the Hadoti region, has so many stepwells that it is called the city of stepwells, and the finest of them is Raniji ki Baori, built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati with a high gateway and carved brackets.

Chand Baori stands at Abhaneri village in Dausa district and is attributed to King Chanda of the Nikumbh line in about the ninth century; it descends thirteen storeys and has some three thousand five hundred narrow steps laid in a double criss cross pattern, with the Harshat Mata temple beside…