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BROAD ONION TEST. "Importantly, the comparison is not restricted to onions versus humans. It could as easily be between pufferfish and lungfish, which differ by ∼350-fold, or members of the genus Allium, which have more than a 4-fold range in genome size that is not the result of polyploidy." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

THE ONION TEST. "The domestic onion, Allium cepa, is a diploid plant (2n = 16) with a haploid genome size of roughly 16 billion base pairs (16 Gbp), or about five times larger than humans." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

RELATIVE DIFFERENCES. "Even closely related species with very similar biological properties and the same ploidy level can differ significantly in genome size." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

LARGE GENOMES. "Organisms that have very large genomes are not few in number or outliers—for example, of the >200 salamander genomes analyzed thus far, all are between four and 35 times larger than the human genome." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

UNRELATED TO COMPLEXITY. "Genome size varies independently of intuitive notions of organism complexity or presumed number of protein-coding genes. For example, a human genome contains eight times more DNA than that of a pufferfish but is 40 times smaller than that of a lungfish." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

"GENOME SIZE varies enormously among species: at least 7,000-fold among animals and 350-fold even within vertebrates." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

JUNK DNA APOLOGIST AND CONTRARIANS (Alexander Palazzo, and T. Ryan Gregory, among others) make the case that most non-coding DNA has (so far) not had a function assigned to it. They raise excellent points about how little we know about their functioning. Since the majority of the genome is non-coding DNA, genome size differences are of considerable relevance. Deep dive to follow. https://lnkd.in/eT5V5Xc View in LinkedIn

NON-CODING DNA, formerly "junk-DNA" continues to pose a remarkable challenge to geneticists and evolutionary scientists. On one hand, the Viral World camp with ever-expanding regulatory roles for these RNAs are eroding the old and outworn concept of functionless junk; but there are still apologists for junk DNA whose argument resides in the fact we cannot (yet) ascribe all the functions to that big non-coding chunk of genomes. A work in process. View in LinkedIn

"PROBIOTICS (i.e., live microorganisms similar to beneficial microorganisms found in the human gut) are reported to modulate a number of disorders including metabolic disorders, behavioral conditions and cognitive functions." https://lnkd.in/eHd-EHP View in LinkedIn

GUT BACTERIA AND MENTAL HEALTH. "Early life perturbations of the developing gut microbiota can impact neurodevelopment and potentially lead to adverse mental health outcomes later in life." https://lnkd.in/egTKHRg View in LinkedIn