Organism with largest genome on earth: a tiny fern

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https://phys.org/news/2024-05-tiny-fern-largest-genome-earth.html

The analysis revealed the species T. oblanceolata to have a record-breaking genome size of 160.45 Gbp, which is about 7% larger than that of P. japonica (148.89 Gbp).

When unraveled, the DNA from each cell of this fern would stand taller than the Elizabeth Tower in Westminster, London, which is 96m tall and home to the world-famous Big Ben bell. For comparison, the human genome contains about 3.1 Gbp distributed across 23 chromosomes and when stretched out like a ball of yarn, the length of DNA in each cell only measures about 2m.


What do you think is encoded
in this tiny fern's genome, which is just more than 50 times as much DNA as humans?

  • Junk. Useless junk.

  • Special cases for special situations

  • Redundancy. Redundancy. Redundancy.

  • other


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Organism with largest genome on earth: a tiny fern | Ecency