Abstract:Nucleolar dominance plays an important role in plant polyploidy. Polyploid can cope with the genetic changes in polyploidy via regulating the expression of rDNA genes to control the number of ribosomes. The rDNA gene expression regulation, which is controlled by the chromatin state rather than by the DNA sequence, is a large-scale and global pattern, and genes silencing usually occurs in the whole nucleolus region. Nucleolar dominance contributes to the protein synthesis and the genome stabilization. Chromosome elimination may be a way to response mechanism in polyploidy. Although the link between nucleolar dominance and chromosome elimination is supported by tremendous evidences, the genetic mechanism remains unclear, especially the genome specificity of chromosome elimination. Therefore, further research on the genetic mechanism will reveal the role of nucleolar dominance in the formation of polyploidy. The purpose of this study is to explain how plants cope with the genomic shock of polyploidy through nucleolar dominance, and to provide an insight in polyploidization.