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What does the root word zygous mean?

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Anonymous

10y ago
Updated: 8/21/2019

Zygous comes from the Greek root zygos, meaning 'yoked', that is 'linked together' as one does horses or oxen to pull a vehicle. It can loosely be thought of as 'part of a pair'. Thus we have a homozygous individual who has two identical alleles in a pair, or a heterozygous one which has two different alleles. We also see the root in 'zygote', a fertilised egg, because it is formed from two gametes joined together.

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Wiki User

10y ago

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