- A small, seemingly unremarkable fern that only grows on the remote Pacific Island of New Caledonia, a French Pacific territory that has recently seen unrest.
- It is crowned as the record-holder for having the largest genome of any organism on the earth.
- The New Caledonian fern (Tmesipteris oblanceolata) has more than 50 times more DNA packed into the nucleus of its cells than humans.
- It is seven per cent larger than the previous record holder, the Japanese flowering plant Paris japonica.
- Plants have the biggest genomes; they can also have incredibly small ones.
- The more DNA you have, the larger your cells need to be to squeeze it all in.
- For plants, bigger cells mean things like the pores of leaves have to be larger, which can make them grow more slowly. It is also trickier to make new copies of all that DNA, limiting their reproductive abilities.
Genome
- Humans are estimated to have more than 30 trillion cells in our bodies.
- Within each of those cells is a nucleus that contains DNA, which is like a book of instructions that tells an organism like ourselves how to live and survive.
- All of an organism’s DNA is called its genome.
- Among animals, the marbled lungfish has the largest.
Dig Deeper: What is the difference between gene and genome?
