nondisjunction in plants

[jonofbridger]

nondisjunction in plants

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Post by jonofbridger » Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:15 am

In humans trisomies or monosomies usually result in abortions or something like down syndrome, but can anyone tell me what happens in plants?

[Jelanen]

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Post by Jelanen » Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:28 am

Plants are the genetic whackos of the biology world. If memory serves, wheat was recently the first plant genome sequenced and wheat is usually 4n. I'm no plant geneticist but I do know that plants play a different ball game when it comes ploidy. Heck, there are even organisms that are 1n and some that are 6n and everywhere in between.

-Jelanen

[mith]

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Post by mith » Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:57 am

Plants don't have any significant problems with polyploidy but the problem is concerning multiples of single genes not the whole set.

[robotics]

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Post by robotics » Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:34 am

Like he said, plants have no problem at all with polyploidy, it is not at all uncommon for plants to have as much as 128 N. For a human to have such a genome is just a disaster.

When botanists make generalizations they usually base it on the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, for its simple genome and short generation time. Its entire genome has approximately 26000 genes in it (for reference human genomes have approximately 30000 genes).

[jonofbridger]

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Post by jonofbridger » Fri Mar 04, 2005 10:53 pm

What about with one particular chromosome? Not necessarily multiples of an entire set? Will the genetic difference create any visible changes in the plant?