3 ms·
This article is self-contradictory. In the second caption: "Each cell of JCVI-syn3.0 contains just 473 genes, fewer than any other independent organism." In t
by pak 11y ago
This article is self-contradictory.
In the second caption: "Each cell of JCVI-syn3.0 contains just 473 genes, fewer than any other independent organism."
In the main text: "In a 1995 Science paper, Venter’s team sequenced the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a sexually transmitted microbe with the smallest genome of any known free-living organism, and mapped its 470 genes."
Which is it? Venter would have seemed to disproven his own claim to novelty, unless we've found new genes in M. genitalium's genome since 1995.
Edit: As with most biological terms, part of the problem is the fuzziness of the definition of "gene". More recent studies claim M. genitalium has 525 genes [1], but that might be including tRNA and ncRNA regions. I'd still object to the article's poor editing. Also, let's get down to brass tacks here: we've only trimmed a 580kb genome down to 531kb (9% reduction). Clearly, life is already pretty damn efficient.
[1] http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(12)00776-3 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(12)00776-3
- greeneggs 11y agoThe figure caption is misleading. By "smallest genome" they mean fewest base pairs (531,000 base pairs, compared to 580,000 in Mycoplasma genitalium).
- pak 11y agoThat's not what I'm getting at. If M. genitalium really has only 470 genes by whatever counting scheme we've chosen, then the claim that "each cell of JCVI-syn3.0 contains just 473 genes, fewer than any other independent organism" is simply mistaken.
- marxidad 11y agoIt's possible that a different counting scheme was chosen for either case.
- dnautics 11y agoHey! So I worked in this lab (but on a different project): yeah some of the accounting is wierd and pr-ish, there are 530kb phytoplasmas (but they can't even make their own nucleotides) M.mycoides was used because it has a reasonable growing time (genitalium colonies appear in weeks)... So really the impressive achievement was generally strategically reducing a genome without doing much damage to the doubling time.
- novaleaf 11y agoI assume that because Mycoplasma genitalium is a parasite, it's not considered "independent". But yes, confusing hyperbole