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Largest Genome Ever
sciencehabit writes "A rare Japanese flower named Paris japonica sports an astonishing 149 billion base pairs, making it 50 times the size of a human genome — and the largest genome ever found. The genome would be taller than Big Ben if stretched out end to end. The researchers warn however that big genomes tend to be a liability: plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinctions—and they grow more slowly than plants with less DNA, because it takes so long to replicate their genome."
Since the article was light on visuals, I found a picture of the largest genome ever.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
My girlfriend always said it's not the size of the genome that counts, its what you do with it.
Big Ben is, technically, the nick-name of the Great Bell inside the clock tower. That bell is only slightly taller than 2 meters.
Please to be fucking off of my internet.
One of the coolest sites, ever: zombo.com
Everyone on the internet who has read or come near your post is now dumber because of it. I award you no points, and may Al Gore have mercy on your soul
Well, a large genome generally means lots of redundancy. Lots of redundancy is theorized to mean high resistance to radiation. This plant should, therefore, be highly resistant. That is potentially quite useful knowledge. Back in the days when people looked to hydroponics and Biosphere 2 as a way of getting oxygen into an artificial environment, they forgot to take into consideration that most plantlife won't cope with the radiation on, say, Mars. In order to be able to get a livable environment for humans, you must first create a livable environment for the plants needed. Obvious solution - use rad-resistant plants as part of an initial program for building up the environment.
Once you've got an artificial environment that is biologically stable and sustaining good O:CO2 ratios for plantlife, you can look to advancing that environment. I'd suggest having a two layer dome, with the gap between the inner dome and outer dome flooded at as high a pressure as the domes can take something that'll filter the radiation. By having an organic system that can cope, you can take your time getting it right. Regardless of what is actually done, these plants will provide a rich topsoil that will be valuable to the plants that are actually needed by humans.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not that I have read TFA, but this is probably another plant with multiple copies of each chomosome. In which case it's not really a newsflash; this is the case for many plants. Sugar cane and many other monocots have extremely multiploid genomes.
So does this plant run around asking for a MUL-TI-PASS?
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
It must be made by Microsoft. Far too many lines of code. :)
Converted to mathematics, the error in logic if more clear:
1) You say that for all 'x', there must be an 'x-1'. ("a cause", "antecedent", "precedent", or whatever)
2) You say that "we atheists" claim that the "first thing" is '1'.
3) Hence, if there's a '1', there must be a '0'. ("the first thing must be created")
4) Then, you basically make the unfounded claim that '0' must be 'God'.*
The problem is that this simply implies that all negative numbers must exist also, (-1, -2, -3, etc...), since there's no reason to stop at 0.
In other words, there's no reason to stop at "God". God must also have a cause. And the cause of God must also have a cause, etc...
If you say that "God" is special and has no cause, then (1) was not true, it's actually "for all 'x' except some 'x' there must be an 'x-1'", which is a different rule. Hence, the whole argument is hogwash, since the original rule cannot be true for it to work. That is, if there are exceptions to the rule, then there's no reason for the Universe itself to not be one of those exceptions. This argument, and it's counter-arguments have been known since ancient times, it's not exactly new. You're not exactly surprising any Atheists with a shocking new proof. For crying out loud, there's a 10-page Wikipedia article about it's long history.
* I assume that you refer specifically to the Abrahamic God that spoke to a barely literate goat herder on the side of a mountain in ancient Palestine, raped some woman who was apparently a virgin despite living with her husband, and then watched his illegitimate son get executed, right? Otherwise you could be speaking of any God. Lets say, Zeus. I like Zeus. He's the kind of womanising, lightning-bolt throwing God I can relate to! Some of his human consorts were even awake when he impregnated them -- what a gentleman! If we're going to start making assumptions that "the cause of the universe" must be a specific God, lets pick a good one!
“I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen F. Roberts
Clearly humans are more efficiently coded.
Other people spoke of the other parts of this already, but I thought I'd make a point I rarely see:
When people speak of religion being the source of morality, it becomes obvious they never actually read the bible. In it, Moses, Abraham and a few other people actually argue with God and get him to change his mind on smiting some people. If they can argue with God on smiting, then they must have a source of morality that's not God, because otherwise whatever God says is the moral thing, and there can't be an argument.
Large plant genomes tend to be polyploid (>2 copies of chromosomes) and full of repetitive elements. In other words, the overall complexity is similar to other plants, even though the total size is much larger.