Minimum DNA content in cyanobacteria and eukaryotic photolithotrophs

Range 2.1 cyanobacteria: 44 eukaryotic photolithotrophs fg/cell
Organism Various
Reference John A.Raven, Why are there no picoplanktonic O2 evolvers with volumes less than 10^-19 m^3? J. Plankton Res. (1994) 16 (5): 565-580. doi: 10.1093/plankt/16.5.565 p.568 2nd paragraph
Primary Source Raven.J.A. (1986) Physiological consequences of extremely small size for autotrophic organisms on the sea. In Platt.T.R. and Li.W.K.W. (eds). Photosynthetic Picoplankton. Canadian Bulletin of Fisheries and Aquatic Science. 214. pp. 1—70.
Comments More recent work on the red algal class Cyanidiophyceae shows that Cyanidioschyzon merolae (red algae, eukaryote) has a total of 14.6 Mbp DNA (Ohta et al., 1992 Suzuki etal., 1992), i.e. 8.90 GDa (assuming a mean Mr of a base pair of 610 Da, assuming adenine = thymine = guanine = cytosine) or 14.8 fg DNA per cell.
Entered by Uri M
ID 107094