干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Nucleolus was regarded as a mere ribosome-producing factory for many decades however, in the past two decades; this has come to the light that it is a plurifunctional nuclear domain which plays vital role in many cellular processes. Despite many advances, much remains to be revealed about the nucleolus association with cellular processes. While exploring the chromosomal diversity in the high altitude plants of the Indian cold desert region in North West Himalayas we came across 140 wild plants, out of these, pollen mother cell (PMC) in 31 plants showed the occurrence of additional nucleoli. Coincidently, all these plants also depicted the phenomenon of cytomixis i.e. inter-PMC chromatin material extrusion/transfer among/between adjacent meiocytes. Interestingly, it was noticed that nucleolus accompanied the chromatin material during process of cytomixis. During, and after the migration of nucleolus, change in its shape, size and number has also been discussed. So the current paper here in correlated the inter-PMC migration of nucleolus to the occurrence of cytomixis.