Role of Polyteny in Plant Epigenetic Variability

This paper discusses the available data on polyteny in plants and data on the structural and functional organization of the plant genome and its role in epigenetic variability and inheritance. Also discussed the results of our studies on marker enzymes in agamospermous (apomictic) progenies of sugar beet, pointing to the influence of chromosome polyteny on the epigenetic variability of enzyme genes and on the ratios of phenotypic classes of marker enzymes. Сomparison of the known with our experimental data enabled the consideration of differential polyteny of plant chromosomes, not only as a factor of epigenetic variability of gene expression, but also as a factor of evolution of the genome structural organization. Polyteny is considered to be an element of the system of recording hereditary information about epigenetic changes arising during ontogenesis.