Explain how independent assortment occurs in cells and explain its importance.

Answer:

Independent assortment is Mendel’s second law of inheritance, which states that traits are passed from parents to offspring independently of each other. This process occurs during Metaphase I of meiosis when homologous chromosome pairs align randomly at the metaphase plate. Because there are two possible alignments for each pair of chromosomes and these alignments are determined by chance, the process leads to significant genetic variation in the resulting gametes.