The ploidy level of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 is highly variable and is influenced by growth phase and by chemical and physical external parameters.

Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 is a cyanobacterial model strain widely used to study many biological processes and is also applied for the production of biopolymers. Recently, it was reported that two of its substrains are highly polyploid. To test whether this can be generalized to the whole strain, six substrains were selected and their ploidy levels quantified. The ploidy levels of all substrains were highly growth phase regulated and the copy number was on average about 20 at an OD750 of 0.1 and about 4 at an OD750 of 2.5. In addition to growth phase, external conditions were found to influence the ploidy level, i.e. the copy number was elevated at lower light intensity and at higher phosphate concentrations (53 and 35 copies, respectively). In the absence of external phosphate, considerable growth was observed, although growth rate and growth yield were much lower than in the presence of either orthophosphate or genomic DNA as external source of phosphate. A rapid reduction in genome copy number was observed during growth in the absence of phosphate, indicating that replication ceased and genomes were distributed to the daughter cells. During prolonged incubation of stationary-phase cultures in the absence of phosphate, the cells eventually became monoploid. Taking the data together, the ploidy level of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 is extremely variable and is influenced by both growth phase and physical and chemical environmental parameters.