Plant Bio Question

October 27, 2010 7:11 PM

Hi all, Just a quick one from the annals of Plant Bio: Strawberry is an octoploid right? So what is the gametic chromosome number of a single nucleus of a pollen grain produced by the plant under normal conditions?
posted by Benzle to Science & Nature (3 answers total)

Commercial strawberries are octoploid, which means gametes, like pollen, will be tetraploid. Most species have an n of 7 so tetraploid gametes would have 28 chromosomes.
posted by emyd at 7:46 PM on October 27, 2010

Assuming you have a stable, non-hybrid polyploid plant, I think you can assume that its gametes will simply contain half of the number of chromosomes found in a normal somatic cell. Unlike animals, which set aside a discrete population of germ cells, I think plants actually produce their gametes from somatic cells (though I don't think it really matters for the purpose of this example).

So, if your octoploid strawberries have 56 chromosomes (7 basic chromosomes x 8), the gametes will contain 28 (half of 56; technically tetraploid). But, plants are weird and it's been a long time since I've thought about plant genetics, so don't take this as gospel.
posted by pullayup at 7:49 PM on October 27, 2010

Different strawberry species have different ploidy.
posted by grouse at 8:04 PM on October 27, 2010