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A printed copy of the entire human genome Fills 220 large booksTo do the same for a small, seemingly inconspicuous fern found on some Pacific islands would require about 11,000 books.

This plant is Tumecipteris oblancoratahas the largest genome of any known organism, Jaume Pellicer The discovery was made by researchers at the Barcelona Botanical Institute in Spain.

Each fern cell contains 321 billion DNA letters, or base pairs, in its nucleus. If they were lined up in a single line, they would be about 105 metres long. “As far as we know, that's the largest,” Pellicer says.

By comparison, the nucleus of a human cell contains just over 6 billion base pairs. Or about 2 metersIt has about 50 times less DNA than ferns.

Prior to this discovery, the largest genome known was that of a Japanese flowering plant. Paris JaponicaPellicer reported in 2010 that each nucleus contains 298 billion base pairs. The largest animal genome is that of the water wolf lungfish. Protopterus aethiopicusThere are 260 billion base pairs per nucleus.

T. Obranco It's a rare plant that grows only on a few islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean: New Caledonia and Vanuatu. In 2023, Pellicer and his colleagues collected samples from New Caledonia.

To work out the size of the fern's genome, the team extracted the nuclei of cells from the stems, stained the DNA inside the nuclei with a fluorescent dye, and measured the intensity of light as the nuclei passed under a photodetector.

Pellicer says there are two reasons why some plants have large genomes: First, many plants have multiple sets of chromosomes, rather than the typical two sets in animals. T. Obranco It has eight sets of chromosomes.

But most plants with multiple chromosome sets still have small genomes overall, Pellicer says. Instead, a key factor is an inability to control the proliferation of genetic parasites called transposons.

Transposons are pieces of DNA that can copy and paste themselves, causing genomes to expand rapidly unless organisms develop ways to suppress transposons or get rid of the excess DNA. Many genomes, including the human genome, are made up of repeated sequences generated primarily by transposons.

Having a huge genome is a disadvantage, Pellicer says: “Everything takes time. Every time a cell divides, it has to replicate all of its DNA, so the more DNA you have, the longer it takes to replicate.”

Also, cells have to get bigger to accommodate all that DNA, and if cells have large pores in leaves and stems called stomata, they can't respond as quickly to changes in the environment, Pellicer says.

Pellicer thinks that plants that can't regulate transposons to limit the size of their genome tend to go extinct, “which is why you see transposons in so few lineages,” he says. T. Obranco He says the plant may be able to survive on the small islands where it grows because there is less competition.

The researchers plan to sequence just a small portion of the fern's genome, rather than the entire genome, because they lack the computing power needed to assemble and analyze such a large, repetitive genome, Pellicer says.

“It's exciting that we're still discovering new limits on how large the nuclear DNA content can be.” Ryan Gregory “The largest genome on record is that of the Pacific lungfish,” said researcher at the University of Guelph in Canada. But there's debate about how to define genome size, he says. Some think it should be defined as the size of one set of chromosomes, rather than the total amount of DNA in a cell. That would put the record for the largest genome on record: the Pacific lungfish.

Many biologists define genome size as the amount of DNA contained in an egg, pollen, or sperm cell, which is half the amount in a normal cell. T. Obranco It's just 160.45 billion base pairs.