Enviornmental Plant Bio. Blog

Asexual reproduction does not have the ability to cancel out mutations carried over time.  This theroy is known as the Muller's ratchet.  One idea however is that polyploidy can help asexual plants escape this occurance.  This idea howeer has almost no actual experimental evidene of gene converstion between genetic molecules to correct for mutations.  There is some eveidence supporting gene converstion as correcting for mutations using a tobacco plant.  The current hope is that gene conversion may contain biases and provide a connection between lower mutation occurances and asexual reproduction.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-313X.2006.02673.x?cookieSet=1