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> It was also fascinating to me how complex (and how much larger) plant genomes are compared to animals. Perhaps a naive view but, plants have just a limited n
by magicalhippo 3y ago
> It was also fascinating to me how complex (and how much larger) plant genomes are compared to animals.
Perhaps a naive view but, plants have just a limited nervous system[1] and no brains. Doesn't it make sense that they compensate by more preprogrammed behavior in the form of a more complex genome?
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8331040/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8331040/
- eesmith 3y agoNo. The range of genome sizes for plant genomes is very large. "In animals they range more than 3,300-fold, and in land plants they differ by a factor of about 1,000" and "genome size is not proportional to the number of genes present in the genome", quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size . See also the chart "Genome size ranges (in base pairs) of various life forms" from that page, and the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size . Arabidopsis thaliana has about 135 MB base pairs. Humans have about 3.1 GB base pairs. Paris japonica have about 150 GB base pairs.
- magicalhippo 3y agoThanks for the links, much appreciated. I knew about non-coding or junk DNA but had forgotten how extreme it was. Ended up learning about the onion test[1] and this interesting article[2] which suggests classifying non-coding DNA as either junk DNA, spam DNA or both, to better capture the differences that exist. I also found this article[3] providing some interesting overview and discussion on the topic. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Test [2]: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac055 https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac055 [3]: https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12020282 https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12020282