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Updated: May 9, 2026

Manipulation of Ploidy in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: March 15, 2018
Nucleolar dominance and different genome behaviors in hybrids and allopolyploids
Xian-Hong Ge1, Li Ding, Zai-Yun Li
1National Key Lab of Crop Genetic Improvement, College of Plant Science and Technology, National Center of Crop Molecular Breeding, National Center of Oil Crop Improvement (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Many plants are allopolyploids with different nuclear genomes from two or more progenitors, but cytoplasmic genomes typically inherited from the female parent. The importance of this speciation mechanism has stimulated the extensive investigations of genetic consequences of genome mergers in several experimental systems during last 20 years. The dynamic nature of polyploid genomes is recognized, and widespread changes to gene expression are revealed by transcriptomic analysis. These progresses show different stabilities of parental genomes and their unequal contributions to the transcriptome, proteome, and phenotype. We review the results in systems where extensive genetic analyses have been conducted and propose possible mechanisms for biased behavior of parental genomes in allopolyploids, including the role of nucleolar dominance. It is hypothesized that the novel ribosomes with rRNAs from uniparental genome and the ribosomal proteins of biparental origins have some impacts on the biased cellular and genetic behaviors of parental genomes in hybrids and allopolyploids.
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