PubMed · 2026-06-24
When plants from different species mate or double their chromosomes, the genetic machinery inside their cells can fall out of sync — leading to pale leaves, sterile seeds, or outright failure. This review maps how plants cope with that mismatch, and how breeders exploit it to produce hybrid crops.
Cytonuclear mismatches disrupt the assembly of multi-protein complexes critical for photosynthesis and respiration, with visible symptoms including chlorosis (yellowing) and seed sterility.
Plants buffer incompatibility through multiple layers — biased retention of maternal gene copies, gene conversion, altered DNA methylation, changes in splicing and translation rates, and accelerated protein degradation — indicating the response is system-wide, not a single fix.
Cytoplasmic male sterility, a direct product of cytonuclear conflict, is a cornerstone commercial tool in hybrid crop breeding, underlining that evolutionary incompatibility has been harnessed for large-scale agricultural innovation.