Polyploidy is widespread as evident from many species of eukaryotes like animals, plants, and lower unicellular eukaryotes, but in strong contrast, prokaryotes are believed to be monoploid/ haploid and contain a single copy of the genome in the form of the small circular chromosome. There are some exceptions to monoploidy like D. radiodurans, Borrelia sp. etc. this phenomenon of polyploidy among these microorganisms is an evolutionary advantage, which makes them able to survive extreme conditions. With accumulating reports of the presence of polyploidy in most of the bacterial and archaeal species, it is being considered that monoploid species are small minorities among bacteria and archaea. The presence of multiple copies of the genome helps survive extreme conditions through various mechanisms which involve resistance to radiation, survival under high temperature and severe desiccation, lowering the mutation rates, intermolecular gene conversion along with the use of part of copies of the genome as a source of nutrients for short term survival and cell multiplication. Not surprisingly polyploidy is also suggested to play an important role in pathogenesis through the production of antigenic variation helping immune invasion, thus ultimately pathogenesis. Polyploid species of extremely halophilic archaea, Halococcus sp. are being used as model organisms to study the possibility of survival under Martian conditions and extraterrestrial travel on meteorites. It is alluring to segregate isogenic strains with shifting chromosome duplicate numbers, which would take into consideration efficiently investigating the benefits of polyploidy employing correlation of strains that are indistinguishable apart from their ploidy level.