castanyes blaves

This paper, published in Science a couple... oh! wait... three years ago, is a hell of a good one.

An obvious and yet well picked statement:

"The amount of DNA associated with just 30 human genes is equivalent to the entire genome size of an average prokaryote"

which puts a lot of stuff into perspective.

More into the paper, one of the pearls:

"... given that some prokaryotes are capable of cell differentiation, have linear chromosomes, and in rare cases have nuclear membranes, it is unclear whether the relatively simple genomes of microbes are merely reflections of unusual physiological constraints".

An maybe the best piece:

"We argue here that the transitions from prokaryotes to unicellular eukaryotes to multicellular eukaryotes are associated with orders-of-magnitude reductions in population size; by magnifying the power of random genetic drift, reduced population size provides a permissive environment for the proliferation of various genomic features that would otherwise be eliminated by purifying selection"

Well, that doesn't leave much to speculation. Many would agree with it and yet it is not grandly-stated in many places.

To say so in a Dilbert comic sense: "those grumpy guys are getting stuck there in that tiny niche!! [Some million years later] hey! those grumpy guys who were stuck there are now getting kinda bigger and complex..."

posted by avilella  # 5:09 PM