In genetics, the gene density of an organism's genome is the ratio of the number of genes per number of base pairs, usually written in terms of a million base pairs, or megabase (Mb). The human genome has a gene density of 11-15 genes/Mb, while the genome of the C. elegans roundworm is estimated to have 200. Seemingly simple organisms, such as bacteria and amoebas, have a much higher gene density than humans. Bacterial DNA has a gene density on the order of 500-1000 genes/Mb. This is due several factors, including that the fact that bacterial DNA has no introns. There are also fewer codons in bacterial genes. Gene count is calculated by the number of gene flags in the latest version of a given species gtf annotation file. Bear in mind that well studied organisms will probably have higher gene counts because these species have better annotation, therefore these numbers are estimates for comparison.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.