By Will Dunham(Reuters) – You thought the living organism with ;/”he largest genome might be the blue whale, an African elephant or perhaps a giant redwood tree? Not even close. A human being? Wrong again. That honor instead goes to a little fern that grows in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific Ocean.New research shows that this fork fern species, called Tmesipteris oblanceolata, has a genome – all the genetic information of an organism – that is 7% larger than that of the previous record-holder, the Japanese flowering plant Paris japonica, and more than 50 times the size of the human genome.The metric for genome size was the number of base pairs, the fundamental units of DNA, in an organism’s cellular nuclei. If stretched out like from a ball of yarn, the length of the DNA in each cell of this fern would extend nearly 350 feet (106 meters), taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty, the clock tower for London’s Big Ben or India’s Taj Mahal. The human genome would extend a mere 6-1/2 feet (2 meters).The fern grows primarily on the ground or atop fallen tree trunks in New Caledonia, about 750 miles (1,200 km) east of Australia, a …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnBy Will Dunham(Reuters) – You thought the living organism with ;/”he largest genome might be the blue whale, an African elephant or perhaps a giant redwood tree? Not even close. A human being? Wrong again. That honor instead goes to a little fern that grows in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific Ocean.New research shows that this fork fern species, called Tmesipteris oblanceolata, has a genome – all the genetic information of an organism – that is 7% larger than that of the previous record-holder, the Japanese flowering plant Paris japonica, and more than 50 times the size of the human genome.The metric for genome size was the number of base pairs, the fundamental units of DNA, in an organism’s cellular nuclei. If stretched out like from a ball of yarn, the length of the DNA in each cell of this fern would extend nearly 350 feet (106 meters), taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty, the clock tower for London’s Big Ben or India’s Taj Mahal. The human genome would extend a mere 6-1/2 feet (2 meters).The fern grows primarily on the ground or atop fallen tree trunks in New Caledonia, about 750 miles (1,200 km) east of Australia, a …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
