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Which organism has the most complex genome on Earth? Let's say by defining a complexity metric as the size of the compressed data or something. And which organ

Which organism has the most complex genome on Earth? Let's say by defining a complexity metric as the size of the compressed data or something. And which organism has the biggest genome in terms of number of genes? Is there a list of organisms ranked by genome complexity or size? And where does Homo Sapiens fit on this list?

RosanaAnaDana 9y ago
I doubt that is going to work they way you think it will. DNA is not the same as digital data in that its final use state is 3 dimensional, not 1d like a tape (or digital file) or 2d like a raster or some other matrix. As well, this 3d form isn't fixed. So redundant sequences can have very different expression and conformal changes despite being 'digitally' identical. This is further complicated by some weird fricken shit, like in theses cockroaches. Top of my head and can't remember the species or exact number, but I remember some species of fern having between 100-1000 duplicate copies of its genome in each cell. Pteridium I think? Any ways. It was bonkers.
waynecochran 9y ago
Homo sapiens estimated genome size 3.2 billion base pairs, which encodes for about 20,000 genes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size We (mammals) rank high in genes, but not base pairs. The zebrafish has about 26,000 genes "the largest gene set of any vertebrate so far sequenced." https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12111 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12111 Obviously size is not necessarily proportional to complexity. Also, the longer the sequence the more mutations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size#Drake's_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size#Drake's_rule
daemonk 9y ago
If we are just talking about size of the genome, the salamander genome is extremely repetitive and is around 15x the human genome. I seem to remember there was one crustacean that was estimated to have a 100gb genome (30x human). Genome size has a lot to do with weird chromosomal segregations that happen in the history of the species. In terms of complexity, that's an interesting question. I haven't looked it up, but I am sure someone has done the study. Just something like counting unique k-mers of the genome will probably give you some kind of estimation. There are a lot of weird organisms out there with very different strategies for passing on their genome. There are organisms with program genome rearrangements (lamprey, roundworm) where somatic and germ genomes are actually different. There is an organism (I forgot the name) that literally breaks apart their genome into bunch of pieces and then put them back together differently for their somatic cells. There are also organisms with multiple nuclei (tetrahymena).

RosanaAnaDana 9y ago

I doubt that is going to work they way you think it will. DNA is not the same as digital data in that its final use state is 3 dimensional, not 1d like a tape (or digital file) or 2d like a raster or some other matrix. As well, this 3d form isn't fixed. So redundant sequences can have very different expression and conformal changes despite being 'digitally' identical. This is further complicated by some weird fricken shit, like in theses cockroaches. Top of my head and can't remember the species or exact number, but I remember some species of fern having between 100-1000 duplicate copies of its genome in each cell. Pteridium I think? Any ways. It was bonkers.

waynecochran 9y ago

Homo sapiens estimated genome size 3.2 billion base pairs, which encodes for about 20,000 genes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size We (mammals) rank high in genes, but not base pairs. The zebrafish has about 26,000 genes "the largest gene set of any vertebrate so far sequenced." https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12111 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12111 Obviously size is not necessarily proportional to complexity. Also, the longer the sequence the more mutations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size#Drake's_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size#Drake's_rule

daemonk 9y ago

If we are just talking about size of the genome, the salamander genome is extremely repetitive and is around 15x the human genome. I seem to remember there was one crustacean that was estimated to have a 100gb genome (30x human). Genome size has a lot to do with weird chromosomal segregations that happen in the history of the species. In terms of complexity, that's an interesting question. I haven't looked it up, but I am sure someone has done the study. Just something like counting unique k-mers of the genome will probably give you some kind of estimation. There are a lot of weird organisms out there with very different strategies for passing on their genome. There are organisms with program genome rearrangements (lamprey, roundworm) where somatic and germ genomes are actually different. There is an organism (I forgot the name) that literally breaks apart their genome into bunch of pieces and then put them back together differently for their somatic cells. There are also organisms with multiple nuclei (tetrahymena).