Revisiting the hypothesis of an energetic barrier to genome complexity between eukaryotes and prokaryotes.

ABSTRACT: The absence of genome complexity in prokaryotes, being the evolutionary precursors to eukaryotic cells comprising all complex life (the prokaryote-eukaryote divide), is a long-standing question in evolutionary biology. A previous study hypothesized that the divide exists because prokaryotic genome size is constrained by bioenergetics (prokaryotic power per gene or genome being significantly lower than eukaryotic ones). However, this hypothesis was evaluated using a relatively small dataset due to lack of data availability at the time, and is therefore controversial. Accordingly, we constructed a larger dataset of genomes, metabolic rates, cell sizes and ploidy levels to investigate whether an energetic barrier to genome complexity exists between eukaryotes and prokaryotes while statistical

SUBMITTER: Chiyomaru K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7062059 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature