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Cited by 323Chromosomal and Genetic VariationsGenomics and Phylogenetic StudiesProtist diversity and phylogeny

What's in a genome? The C-value enigma and the evolution of eukaryotic genome content

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Elliott, Tyler A., Gregory, T. Ryan·2015·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
DOI 10.1098/rstb.2014.0331PMC PMC4571570
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Abstract

Some notable exceptions aside, eukaryotic genomes are distinguished from those of Bacteria and Archaea in a number of ways, including chromosome structure and number, repetitive DNA content, and the presence of introns in protein-coding regions. One of the most notable differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes is in size. Unlike their prokaryotic counterparts, eukaryotes exhibit enormous (more than 60 000-fold) variability in genome size which is not explained by differences in gene number. Genome size is known to correlate with cell size and division rate, and by extension with numerous organism-level traits such as metabolism, developmental rate or body size. Less well described are the relationships between genome size and other properties of the genome, such as gene content, transposable element content, base pair composition and related features. The rapid expansion of ‘complete’ genome sequencing projects has, for the first time, made it possible to examine these relationships across a wide range of eukaryotes in order to shed new light on the causes and correlates of genome size diversity. This study presents the results of phylogenetically informed comparisons of genome data for more than 500 species of eukaryotes. Several relationships are described between genome size and other genomic parameters, and some recommendations are presented for how these insights can be extended even more broadly in the future.

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  • K-mer-based genome size estimates correlated strongly with independent cytometric measurements from the Animal Genome Size Database (r = 0.791, P < 0.0001), confirming their suitability for comparative analysis.

    “K-mer–based estimates correlated strongly with independent cytometric measurements from the Animal Genome Size Database (r = 0.791, P < 0.0001; SI Appendix, Fig. S1 and Table S11), confirming their suitability for comparative analysis (81).”

    From Convergent genome streamlining accompanies independent miniaturization in the world’s smallest fishes (2026) · cites this paper as [81]

    The Results report a strong correlation between genome-assembly estimates and densitometric or flow-cytometric estimates (r = 0.9527, p < 0.0001), and the Methods identify the Animal Genome Size Database as one source of cytometric data. The paper does not report a k-mer-based comparison or the claimed r = 0.791; its Discussion also cautions that sequence-based estimates tend to be lower, especially for larger genomes. No page numbers were provided in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.90)

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Elliott, T. A., & Gregory, T. R.
Affiliations
University of Guelph (CA)
Corresponding author
Gregory, T. Ryan
ORCID
Venue
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher
The Royal Society
Published
2015-09-26
Volume
370
Issue
1678
Pages
20140331
ISSN
  • 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
  • 1471-2970
DOI
10.1098/rstb.2014.0331
PMC
PMC4571570
OpenAlex
W2254186441
Cited by
323
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 38 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 43 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 42 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 2
FWCI
33.01
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Chromosomal and Genetic Variations
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protist diversity and phylogeny
Keywords
genome size variation, genome content, transposable elements, repetitive DNA, introns, gene content, phylogenetic comparative analysis, eukaryotic evolution
MeSH terms
Animals, DNA, Eukaryotic Cells, Biological Evolution, Gene Expression Regulation, Plants, Genetic Variation, Genomics, Genome Size

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