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Updated: May 30, 2026

Manipulation of Ploidy in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: March 15, 2018
The causes and consequences of polyploidy in normal development and cancer
Teresa Davoli1, Titia de Lange
1Laboratory for Cell Biology and Genetics, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10065, USA.
Abstract:
Although nearly all mammalian species are diploid, whole-genome duplications occur in select mammalian tissues as part of normal development. Such programmed polyploidization involves changes in the regulatory pathways that normally maintain the diploid state of the mammalian genome. Unscheduled whole-genome duplications, which lead primarily to tetraploid cells, also take place in a substantial fraction of human tumors and have been proposed to constitute an important step in the development of cancer aneuploidy. The origins of these polyploidization events and their consequences for tumor progression are explored in this review.
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