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The right stuff: evidence for an ‘optimal’ genome size in a wild grass population
Author(s) -
Beaulieu Jeremy M.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
new phytologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.742
H-Index - 244
eISSN - 1469-8137
pISSN - 0028-646X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03412.x
Subject(s) - biology , genome , population , genome size , genetics , evolutionary biology , agronomy , gene , demography , sociology
The immense variation exhibited in plant genome size is remarkable. In owering plants alone, the observed variation in genome size (i.e. the total amount of DNA in an unreplicated nucleus) is huge, ranging from 0.630 Gbp (billion base pairs) to almost 125 Gbp – a difference of nearly 2000-fold. However, despite this immense variation, the cumulative distribution of genome sizes in plants is signicantly skewed towards smaller sizes. A natural corollary is that the skewed distribution is an indication of large genomes being disadvantageous (Knight et al., 2005). It has long been proposed that genome size has measurable phenotypic and ecological consequences which are mediated through its effect on cellular parameters (such as nuclear volume, meiotic and mitotic duration, and cell size), leading some to suggest that genome size can have a nongenic role in the functioning of an organism (Bennett, 1972).