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Concept
Genome size
Summary
Genome size is the total amount of DNA contained within one copy of a single complete genome. It is typically measured in terms of mass in picograms (trillionths (10−12) of a gram, abbreviated pg) or less frequently in daltons, or as the total number of nucleotide base pairs, usually in megabases (millions of base pairs, abbreviated Mb or Mbp). One picogram is equal to 978 megabases. In diploid organisms, genome size is often used interchangeably with the term C-value.
An organism's complexity is not directly proportional to its genome size; total DNA content is widely variable between biological taxa. Some single-celled organisms have much more DNA than humans, for reasons that remain unclear (see non-coding DNA and C-value enigma).
The term "genome size" is often erroneously attributed to a 1976 paper by Ralph Hinegardner, even in discussions dealing specifically with terminology in this area of research (e.g., Greilhuber 2005). Notably, Hinegardner used the term only once: in the title. The term actually seems to have first appeared in 1968, when Hinegardner wondered, in the last paragraph of another article, whether "cellular DNA content does, in fact, reflect genome size". In this context, "genome size" was being used in the sense of genotype to mean the number of genes.
In a paper submitted only two months later, Wolf et al. (1969) used the term "genome size" throughout and in its present usage; therefore these authors should probably be credited with originating the term in its modern sense. By the early 1970s, "genome size" was in common usage with its present definition, probably as a result of its inclusion in Susumu Ohno's influential book Evolution by Gene Duplication, published in 1970.
With the emergence of various molecular techniques in the past 50 years, the genome sizes of thousands of eukaryotes have been analyzed, and these data are available in online databases for animals, plants, and fungi (see external links).
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