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GENOME EVOLUTION

Jumping genomic gigantism

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 1687–1688 (2018)Cite this article

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Genomic gigantism in amphibians originated through a single extraordinary jump overlying otherwise gradual change; genome size variation is related to both the external environment and life history in frogs, but may not be in salamanders.

DNA encodes information that is as mission-critical as it gets for life on Earth: the directions for development, function, repair and reproduction of living things. In most genomes, however, there is an astonishing amount of other information — not at all mission critical — that resides side by side with life’s fundamental specs. In eukaryotes, the amount of such extraneous DNA is far more variable across species than the amount of genes, regulatory elements and other essential sequences. Extraneous sequences underlie the huge variation in amount of DNA contained in a set of chromosomes1. The size of the genome is a trait that remains surprisingly enigmatic. Is genome size variation largely an emergent property of dynamics that play out at the level of the genome2? Or is genome size itself, or one of its many cell- and organism-level correlates (such as cell size), a target of natural selection3? Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Liedtke and colleagues4 attempt to answer these questions by studying a clade with extensive variation in genome size.

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Fig. 1: Evolutionary relationships and genome size variation in amphibians.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Rachel Lockridge Mueller

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Elizabeth L. Jockusch

Authors
  1. Rachel Lockridge Mueller
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  2. Elizabeth L. Jockusch
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Correspondence to Rachel Lockridge Mueller or Elizabeth L. Jockusch.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Mueller, R.L., Jockusch, E.L. Jumping genomic gigantism. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1687–1688 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0703-3

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