{"id":35654,"date":"2024-06-01T07:45:37","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T07:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/tiny-fern-smashes-world-record-for-biggest-dna\/"},"modified":"2024-06-01T07:45:38","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T07:45:38","slug":"tiny-fern-smashes-world-record-for-biggest-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/tiny-fern-smashes-world-record-for-biggest-dna\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny fern smashes world record for biggest DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Helen Briggs,<\/span> Environment Correspondent, BBC News, <\/span>@hbriggs<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"PolPol Fernandez<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The rare fern is found on the Pacific island territory of New Caledonia<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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A fern has entered the record books for having more DNA than any other living thing.<\/p>\n

The plant\u2019s genetic material, or genome, would reach about 100 metres when unravelled, outstripping Big Ben.<\/p>\n

Scientists say it’s a “crazy” amount of DNA for a tiny plant that most people would walk by without noticing.<\/p>\n

“It’s the biggest genome that has ever been discovered out of all organisms that live on this planet,” Dr Ilia Leitch of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, told BBC News.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow does it function? How does it survive with that much DNA in it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"PolPol Fernandez<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The mountainous landscape of New Caledonia is home to hundreds of unique plants and animals<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The genome is the complete set of DNA instructions within a cell containing all the information needed for a living thing to develop and grow. <\/p>\n

Many plants have big genomes and scientists want to find out why.<\/p>\n

They hope to understand how this affects function \u2013 and might influence extinction risk.<\/p>\n

The fern, known as Tmesipteris oblanceolate<\/i>, belongs to a primordial group of plants that evolved long before the dinosaurs set foot on the earth.<\/p>\n

It’s found only on New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean and a few neighbouring islands, where it grows on the trunks and branches of rainforest trees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"PolPol Fernandez<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Little is known about the ancient group to which the fern belongs<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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In the study, published in the journal<\/a> iScience, international researchers extracted genetic material from specimens collected in New Caledonia.<\/p>\n

They measured how much dye bound to the DNA \u2013 the more dye, the bigger the genome.<\/p>\n

The fern was found to have a record-breaking genome size of 160 billion base pairs of DNA, which when unravelled would stretch out to about 100 metres.<\/p>\n

By comparison, the human genome contains about three billion base pairs and would stretch to about two metres.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"OrianeOriane Hidalgo<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The fern has no roots and grows on the bark of trees<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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The fern now holds three Guinness World Records for the largest genome, largest plant genome and largest fern genome.<\/p>\n

Adam Millward of Guinness World Records said: \u201cTo think this innocuous-looking fern boasts 50 times more DNA than humans is a humbling reminder that there’s still so much about the plant kingdom we don’t know, and that record holders aren’t always the showiest on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Genomes great and small<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Plants and animals contain most of their DNA coiled up inside the nucleus of each cell.<\/p>\n

This genetic material, or genome, provides all the information the organism needs to function stored in long strands of DNA called chromosomes.<\/p>\n

There is much variation in genome size. In the animal kingdom, some of the largest genomes include certain lungfishes and salamander at about 120 billion base pairs.<\/p>\n

Not all plants have big genomes. The oak tree has a relatively small genome – if you stretched out all the DNA from a single cell of an oak tree, it would reach 66 cm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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16 hours ago Helen Briggs, Environment Correspondent, BBC News, @hbriggs Pol Fernandez The rare fern is found on the Pacific island territory of New Caledonia A fern has entered the record books for having more DNA than any other living thing. The plant\u2019s genetic material, or genome, would reach about 100 metres when unravelled, outstripping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63],"tags":[2888,5680,13714,1009,11010,7054,510],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35656,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35654\/revisions\/35656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}