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Pine Tree Has Largest Genome Ever Sequenced
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Using a single pollinated pine seed, researchers have sequenced the entire genome of the loblolly pine tree--and it's a doozy. The tree's genome is largest yet sequenced: 22.18 billion base pairs, more than seven times longer than the human genome. The team found that 82% of the genome was made up of duplicated segments, compared with just 25% in humans. The researchers also identified genes responsible for important traits such as disease resistance, wood formation, and stress response."
It just has to be said - they need to figure out how to integrate that wood formation sequence into human genes, before I get much older.
Yes, I know. But it *did* have to be said.
Witty signature omitted for brevity.
Aye, go with the phloem, I always say.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
All those genes make humans look like flunkies. And knowing a tiny bit about Darwin maybe we could take into account that a pine tree can easily outlive any human ever born. And pine trees tend to have a very long history of reproduction compared to humans. So maybe all the thinking, feeling and running about that humans do is simply proof of our inferiority. think about it. The pine tree needs water, sunshine, a few minerals and an atmosphere and that is about it. Humans need all kinds of things. I've never seen a tree shoot anyone, go mental, or rape other trees. Trees might enjoy making humans feel like idiots.
I'm not surprised. trees and plants were here before we were.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
The team found that 82% of the genome was made up of duplicated segments, compared with just 25% in humans.
See! The pine trees are smart and make multiple copies of their genome segments, for backup purposes. Humans always forget the importance of backups, until it's too late.
there is that level of repetition it seems huge and makes me wonder just how much bacteria and mitochondrial DNA really plays in a human to make sense the discrepancy. Afaik in humans isn't human DNA.
Soon I shall imbue the soles of my feet and grow pine shoes.
Spent All My Mod Points
As someone who works on cancer research involving human genome, I can tell you that you should read any news/research related to genome sequencing with a pinch of salt. The methods used to sequence genome are notoriously unreliable, and the analysis performed on that genome is even worse. This is what happens when you get money if you publish results that sound "cool", but in reality our understanding and capacity to research stuff at the DNA level is much more limited than most people in the field are willing to admit.
That's the largest genome that's been fully sequenced, not the largest genome known. See Comparison of different genome sizes. Genome sizes for plants vary over a huge range, and aren't closely related to organism complexity. The largest genome known is for an amoeboid.
Well, Boss, we have good news and bad news:
- the good news: we've got it up!
-the bad news: it's tossing off splinters!
Break to chorus of "Hurts So Good!" by John Mellencamp.
You have to pay attention to the fact that they were here before we were.
We would not be able to breathe if they were not here!
Wake up!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
The team found that 82% of the genome was made up of duplicated segments,
-funroll-loops
The codebase is huge, many many billion SLOCs.
But, most of the functions never get called, and the rest is code comments ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Genome annotation (finding all the interest features in the sequence) is really computationally intensive, due in large part to the number of separate (often sub-optimally written) algorithms that have to be chained together and interpreted. My team at the iPlant Collaborative worked with the authors of a popular open-source annotation tool called "MAKER" to get it running at scale on the 302 TFLOP Lonestar 4 supercomputer, which in turn was used by the pine team to do in a few hours what used to be 6 months of painstaking bioinformatics. In another month or so, this algorithm will be available via REST API allowing, literally, "Annotation As A Service".
Your mom has the largest genome ever sequenced!