During your summer internship at a laboratory, you are given the opportunity to view a chimpanzee zygote under a microscope. You see that it has 48 chromosomes. How many chromosomes would you expect to find in a chimpanzee’s egg cell?

If the chimpanzee’s zygote has 48 chromosomes, one would expect to find 24 chromosomes in a chimpanzee’s egg.

Explanation:

In a living organism, somatic cells are diploid and possess the full chromosome load, while gametes -sex cells- possess half of the total chromosomes, they are haploid.

The zygote of any organism that reproduces sexually results from the union of a male gamete and a female gamete, so its chromosome load is complete.

This means that if the chimpanzee has 48 chromosomes in its cells, the female sex cell - the egg - has 24 chromosomes.

Learn more:

Haploid and diploid link