Reciprocal silencing

Reciprocal silencing, a genetic phenomenon that primarily occurs in plants, refers to the pattern of redundant genes being silenced following a polyploid event. Polyploidy is common in plants and constitutes an important method of speciation. When a polyploid species arises, its genome contains homoeologs, duplicated chromosomes with equivalent genetic information. However silencing of redundant genes occurs rapidly in new polyploids through genetic and epigenetic means. This primarily occurs because redundancy allows one of the two genes present for each locus to be silenced without affecting the phenotype of the organism, and thus mutations that eliminate gene expression are much less likely to be deleterious or lethal. This allows mutations that would be lethal in diploid populations to accumulate in polyploids. Reciprocal silencing refers to the specific pattern of silencing where equivalent loci in are both silenced and expressed in a reciprocal manner. This phenomenon is observed on two distinct scales.

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