What causes polyploidy?
Heredity as we know is the passing on of traits from parents onto their offsprings. Organisms that pass on one copy per gene to the progeny getting two copies in total are called diploids (2n). In some other organisms, more than one copy per parent is carried forward, called polyploids.
Most polyploids have an even number of chromosomal sets most commonly four(tetraploidy). The consequences of having an odd number of the chromosomal sets are either sterility or infertility because the gametes and offsprings are aneuploid and do not give rise to a viable offspring. Polyploidy has a number of advantages including- 1. Heterosis- improved or increased function and quality of hybrid progeny than the respective parents. It fixes divergent parental genomes in allopolyploids. 2. Gene redundancy- the presence of multiple genes that are performing the same function in an organism. Gene redundancy masks the recessive alleles by dominant wild type alleles in polyploids which will be protective against deleterious recessive mutation and genotoxicity. 3. Self-incompatibility loss and gain of asexual reproduction- facilitation of reproduction through self-fertilization or asexual means thereby disrupting self-incompatibility.
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