Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage
I was really hoping this article would say more about what this means, but this is all we get...
Intriguingly, bigger isn’t always better when it comes to genomes, the team says. Large-genomed plants tend to have slower growth, require more nutrients and perform photosynthesis less efficiently. As such, it’s thought that T. oblanceolata is bumping up against the upper limits for genome size.
I wonder how much of that generic code is actually important and how much is junk.
I was wondering the same.
And... if these ferns are superior to us in some way. 🤣
In some ways, yes. They aren’t susceptible to political propaganda for example.
A humble fern species known as Tmesipteris oblanceolata
Dang. Okay, I wasn’t expecting a fern to have 50x human DNA
DNA polymerase goes brrrrrrrrt
Sequencing that would be a bitch