Tube-dwelling
anemones have largest mitochondrial genome on record
Date: April 23, 2019
Source: Ohio State University
The
tube-dwelling anemone is an ancient sea creature that resembles a prehistoric
flower. The animals live slow, long and predictable lifestyles and look fairly
similar from species to species.
It'd be
easy to use the word "simple" when considering this relative of coral
and jellyfish. But wait -- not so fast.
New
research on tube anemones is challenging everything that evolutionary
biologists thought they knew about sea animal genetics. The mitochondrial DNA
of the tube anemone, or Ceriantharia, is a real head scratcher, from its
unexpected arrangement to its previously unimagined magnitude.
Researchers,
including a team from The Ohio State University, have published new findings
showing that the DNA of the tube anemone does what few other species'
mitochondrial genomes have been shown to do. It defies the classic doughnut
shape it "should" be in and is arranged in several fragmented pieces,
the number of which vary depending on the species.
On top of
that, the animal now holds the record for the largest mitochondrial genome
reported to date. It contains almost 81,000 base pairs, or pieces of genetic
information, according to the new study, published online in the
journal Scientific Reports. Human mitochondrial DNA contains fewer than
17,000 base pairs.
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