The Incredible Shrinking Genome

Shipud writes "Mammalian genomes have been shrinking for about 65 million years, roughly since the dinosaur extinction. Why? And why were ancient mammalian genomes three times larger than they are today? A new article in Genome Biology and Evolution tries to explain this bizarre finding, and why the genomes of mammals (but not of other living groups) are still shrinking. 'Once [the dinosaurs] were gone, mammals started to radiate, fill those niches, and a whole new level of competition arose. The selective advantage of not having a genome encumbered by potentially damaging mobile DNA elements has probably become critical at this "be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein" stage. In effect, the genomes of mammals has been shrinking by removing mobile DNA elements, just after the KT boundary. And according to the model presented in this study, this process is still ongoing: mammalian genomes are not at an equilibrium size. Unlike flies, mammals are still cleaning up.'"

Comments

Re:It's the Right Idea

[A nonymous Coward]

Fundamentalist Islam goes back 1300 years? Fundamentalist Christianity goes back 2000 years! Ha! The ignorant Christians beat the ignorant Muslims again.

Then there's the fact that the ignorant fundamentalist Christians don't even know their own bible, calling gay marriage an affront to traditional Christian marriage, ignoring the Mormons in their modern day midst who are more Christian in their views on marrying multiple wives (but not multiple husbands) and at a young age too. Yes, let's bring back traditional biblical marriage, widows being forced to marry their brother-in-laws, multiple young wives, all that good Christian marriage stuff.

Trolling the trolls is so much fun.