Category: Uncategorized

GENOMIC STREAMLINING. "Genomic researchers have proposed that natural selection may favor small genomes—weeding out superfluous material—through a process called “genomic streamlining. Streamlining makes inherent sense because a small genome should aid metabolic efficiency, because genome size is correlated with cell size." http://scholar.google.es/scholar?q=selective+pressures+for+genomic+simplicity&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8_67jh8zPAhXBbRQKHa6-BbEQgQMICDAA View in LinkedIn

UNDER THE RADAR. "Natural selection can favor the propagation of given genes for the sole reason that they are successful at propagating themselves, while being of no advantage, or sometimes while even being detrimental, to the fitness of the organisms that carry them. Such genes have been called 'selfish genes." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

MASSIVE GENE LOSS. "Two notable examples are the reconstruction of the complex archaeal ancestor and the intron-rich ancestor of eukaryotes. In both cases, evolution in most of the lineages was apparently dominated by extensive loss of genes and introns, respectively." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

INFREQUENT EXAMPLES. "As logical as genomic streamlining might be, few examples have so far been found. Instead, a bevy of articles from the last 10 years show that three separate lines of evidence argue against widespread streamlining in prokaryotes." https://lnkd.in/d3Ys7Am View in LinkedIn

GENOME DOWNSIZING. "Evolutionary chromosome change involves significant variation in DNA amount in diploids and genome downsizing in polyploids." https://lnkd.in/dmkwGfy View in LinkedIn

FLY IN THE OINTMENT. "Suffice it to note that the largest bacterial genomes encompass almost as many genes as some “obviously” complex animals, such as for example flies, and more than many fungi." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

CONFOUNDING PROBLEM. "Comparative genomics reinforced the complex relationships between the different levels of complexity in the most convincing manner by demonstrating the lack of a simple link between genomic and organismal complexities." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

BEYOND THE ONION. "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 QUESTION. "Why does an onion require five times more of it (the genome) than a human? " https://lnkd.in/eT5V5Xc View in LinkedIn

NOT A SIMPLE CORRELATION. "The relationship between genomic complexity and the complexity at various levels of the phenotype, from molecular to organismal, is far from being straightforward as it has become clear already in the pre-genomic era." Some relatively simple creatures have much greater genomic complexity than more complex creatures. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn