Expressed in number of Base Pairs or Bytes, about how large is the simplest eukaryotic genome?
How much of this is 'junk-DNA' (non-coding)?
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1$\begingroup$ what do you mean by "most simple DNA molecule"? $\endgroup$ – Alan Boyd May 1 '14 at 12:33
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1$\begingroup$ you can synthesize DNA of any length, from 1 bp on up, so this question is kind of meaningless... $\endgroup$ – MattDMo May 1 '14 at 14:33
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1$\begingroup$ True.. but I implied that I wanted to know about the shortest naturally occurring DNA in eukaryotic cells. $\endgroup$ – Andreas Hartmann May 1 '14 at 19:06
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$\begingroup$ Information content in mathematical sense? $\endgroup$ – WYSIWYG May 2 '14 at 4:58
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1$\begingroup$ In case you were unaware, you can (and are encouraged!) go back and edit the text of your original question. We're not trying to condemn you for the way you asked the question, just providing suggestions for how you can clarify and improve the question, for your benefit and ours. $\endgroup$ – Daniel Standage May 17 '14 at 2:36
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You asked about eukaryotes. The genome of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is 12.2 Mb.
The genome of the smallest free-living eukaryote, Ostreococcus tauri (a unicellular green alga) is 12.6 Mb
There are smaller eukaryotic genomes, but these are not free-living organisms they are intracellular parasites.
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1$\begingroup$ I'd be interested in some detail about why Saccharomyces is not 'free-living' and maybe a reference for what the smaller genomes are? $\endgroup$ – shigeta May 17 '14 at 13:22
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$\begingroup$ @Shigeta the question was ambiguous, and my answer didn't help. O. tauri is physically (i.e. cell size) the smallest free-living eukaryote. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sequenced_eukaryotic_genomes for some genomes of obligate intracellular parasites such as Cryptosporidium. $\endgroup$ – Alan Boyd May 17 '14 at 14:44
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According to this: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/G/GenomeSizes.html The shortest DNA of a individually living cell is that of Mycoplasma genitalium at about 580000 base pairs. -But it's not eucariotic!
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