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True polyploidy rarely occurs in humans, although polyploid cells occur in highly differentiated tissue, such as liver parenchyma, heart muscle, placenta and in bone marrow. [63] [64] Aneuploidy is more common.
The extreme in polyploidy occurs in the fern genus Ophioglossum, the adder's-tongues, in which polyploidy results in chromosome counts in the hundreds, or, in at least one case, well over one thousand. [citation needed] It is possible for polyploid organisms to revert to lower ploidy by haploidisation. [citation needed]
Aneuploidy is the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes in a cell, for example a human somatic cell having 45 or 47 chromosomes instead of the usual 46. [1] [2] It does not include a difference of one or more complete sets of chromosomes. A cell with any number of complete chromosome sets is called a euploid cell. [1]
Polyploidy is also a well known source of speciation, as offspring, which have different numbers of chromosomes compared to parent species, are often unable to interbreed with non-polyploid organisms. Whole genome duplications are thought to be less detrimental than aneuploidy as the relative dosage of individual genes should be the same.
Klinefelter syndrome is the most common sex chromosome aneuploidy in humans. It represents the most frequent cause of hypogonadism and infertility in men. Most cases are caused by nondisjunction errors in paternal meiosis I. [2] About eighty percent of individuals with this syndrome have one extra X chromosome resulting in the karyotype XXY ...
The alleles on the homologous chromosomes may be different, resulting in different phenotypes of the same genes. This mixing of maternal and paternal traits is enhanced by crossing over during meiosis , wherein lengths of chromosomal arms and the DNA they contain within a homologous chromosome pair are exchanged with one another.
It is important to distinguish between chromosomal translocations that occur in germ cells, due to errors in meiosis (i.e. during gametogenesis), and those that occur in somatic cells, due to errors in mitosis. The former results in a chromosomal abnormality featured in all cells of the offspring, as in translocation carriers.
Another hypothesis is that endoreduplication buffers against DNA damage and mutation because it provides extra copies of important genes. [1] However, this notion is purely speculative and there is limited evidence to the contrary. For example, analysis of polyploid yeast strains suggests that they are more sensitive to radiation than diploid ...