Depending on the animals in question, the amount of DNA per cell may be associated with body size, metabolic rate, developmental rate, or other traits. With an old fashioned cytogenetic staining method (the Feulgen reaction) and a new image analysis densitometry setup, we can estimate genome size for vertebrate species quite readily with only [...]
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My colleagues Chris Organ and Andrew Shedlock, who provided evidence that theropod dinosaurs already had (somewhat) reduced genome sizes prior to the evolution of birds (Organ et al. 2007) have followed up their study by estimating the genome sizes of several species of pterosaurs. Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight, having [...] One of the many aggravations I encounter when reviewing manuscripts is that some authors greatly overstate the applicability of statistically significant patterns they report. For example, a statistically significant pattern in a small comparison of a few animals may be extrapolated in the discussion to the kingdom at large. Today I was disappointed [...] Some time ago, I wrote about the (non-)relationship between genome size and gene number, which also included some discussion of the obvious decoupling of DNA content and “morphological complexity” (however defined). Now, Steve Matheson of Quintessence of Dust has a fun way of demonstrating this, by asking readers to guess which animals have larger [...] I have been hesitant to talk about the association between bird genome size and flight, even though it has been fluttering around in the blogosphere for some time now (e.g., here and here and here). This may seem counterintuitive, since of all the bloggers interested in the issue, I have actually published articles on [...] The seminar that I give most often when I am invited to speak at other universities begins with a brief introduction to genomes, sets up some comparisons between bacteria and eukaryotes, and then moves into a short overview of bacterial genome size evolution before spending the remainder of the time on genome size diversity [...] I have seen both some of the largest and smallest genomes among animals (well, I have seen stain bound to their DNA, at least). The largest report remains that of the marbled African lungfish, Protopterus aethiopicus, at a gigantic 132Gb (about 40 times more than humans). Some authors argue that this is an overestimate, [...] Larry Moran has provided a good discussion of complexity and genome size, and of the confusions that surround their relationship — rather, their lack of a relationship — to one another [Genome size, complexity, and the C-value paradox]. He links to my earlier story about figures that provide a misleading suggestion of a link [...] It is commonly suggested by anti-evolutionists that recent discoveries of function in non-coding DNA support intelligent design and refute “Darwinism”. This misrepresents both the history and the science of this issue. I would like to provide some clarification of both aspects. When people began estimating genome sizes (amounts of DNA per genome) in the [...] There is a new article on the Wired website about junk DNA [One Scientist's Junk Is a Creationist's Treasure]. I make a very brief appearance in it, and I just want to clarify what I meant by the statement cited (I’m still learning that even an hour-long interview might result in only a short [...] |
T. Ryan Gregory 
I am an evolutionary biologist specializing in genome size evolution at the University of Guelph in Canada.
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