4 ms·

I haven't looked into it, but I wonder what would happen if you plotted the proportion of intergenic dna in the genome and species reproduction rate. Thoughts?

• jballanc 18y ago
  Not much. For unicellular organisms, size of genome correlates relatively well with time to divide (which, if you only consist of one cell, is the same as reproducing). This is one of the reasons that bacteria and virii have such compact genomes. Once you get past the single-celled stage, though, the correlation essentially disappears. Reproduction of a multicellular organism is a highly coordinated team effort involving multiple cells/tissues. For these organisms, "intergenic" DNA will correlate more closely with complexity of regulation (but not close enough to be horribly interesting).