Monday, October 11, 2010

Organism with biggest genome ever

Paris japonica is native to sub-alpine regions of Japan. It is the organism with the largest genome known today, about 150 billion base pairs long. Photo: Alpsdake/Wikimedia
Scientist have discovered that a rare japanese flower, Paris japonica has the largest genome known in any organism, about 150 billion base pairs long. That is 50 times the size of the human genome, which contains just over 3 billion DNA base pairs.
The information is published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.
Until now the recordholder of the biggest genome was the marbled lungfish, Protopterus aethiopicus with 130 billion DNA base pairs.

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