A couple of homologous chromosomes, or homologs, are a set of one maternal and one paternal chromosomes that pair up with each other inside a cell during meiosis. These copies have the same genes in the same loci where they provide points along each chromosome which enable a pair of chromosomes to align correctly with each other before separating during meiosis. This is the basis for Mendelian inheritance which characterizes inheritance patterns of genetic material from an organism to its offspring parent developmental cell at the given time and area.