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Science 11 February 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5455, pp. 1060 - 1062
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5455.1060
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Reports

Evidence for DNA Loss as a Determinant of Genome Size

Dmitri A. Petrov, 1* Todd A. Sangster, 2 J. Spencer Johnston, 3 Daniel L. Hartl, 2 Kerry L. Shaw 2

Eukaryotic genome sizes range over five orders of magnitude. This variation cannot be explained by differences in organismic complexity (the C value paradox). To test the hypothesis that some variation in genome size can be attributed to differences in the patterns of insertion and deletion (indel) mutations among organisms, this study examines the indel spectrum in Laupala crickets, which have a genome size 11 times larger than that of Drosophila. Consistent with the hypothesis, DNA loss is more than 40 times slower in Laupala than in Drosophila.

1 Harvard University Society of Fellows,
2 Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
3 Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dpetrov{at}oeb.harvard.edu

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