Hot answers tagged polyploidy
9
Great question, and one about which there has historically been a lot of speculation, and there is currently a lot of misinformation. I will first address the two answers given by other users, which are both incorrect but have been historically suggested by scientists. Then I will try to explain the current understanding (which is not simple or complete). My ...
6
Take a look at the strategies used to sequence the wheat genome. Wheat is hexaploid. The project is described at http://www.wheatgenome.org/.
For early work on the maize genome, we employed methyl filtration in order to reduce genome complexity and size - transposons are filtered out and genes + promoters and such remain. The gene sequences are different ...
4
Plants have a simpler anatomical structure than mammals (is anatomical the right word, or would physiological be more appropriate?). Mammals on average don't have more genes than plants, so my understanding is that this additional complexity is the result of finer and more complex regulatory mechanisms.
When you remove or duplicate an individual gene in an ...
2
In animals, polyploidy is not tolerated and very few polyploid species
are known to exist. Those that do exist are usually asexual,
parthenogenetic, or hermaphroditic. Most of the problems resulting
from polyploidy occur during synapsis of homologues during prophase I.
As plants do not have a chromosomal mechanism for sex determination,
...
1
By definition, polyploidy just means that a cell or organism contains more than 2 pairs of homologous chromosomes (or is more than 2n). This is more common in plants than it is in animals. The plant, as shown below, undergoes failed meiosis, which means that the diploid (2n) cells never become haploid (n). As a result, a plant ends up with more than 2n when ...
1
Actually, that is not what is discussed in the question you linked to. The following is a quote from the very comprehensive accepted answer (emphasis mine):
Polyploidy arises easily in both animals and plants, but reproductive
strategies might prevent it from propagating in certain circumstances,
rather than any reduction in fitness resulting from ...
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