Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Paris japonica flower

Human Genome Times 50 in One Small Flower

The rare white flower from Japan, the Paris japonica, has been found to have the longest genome in the world that with about 150 billion base pairs is about 50 times longer than that of a human being, and blogger Elizabeth Pennisi at ScienceShot suggests that "plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinctions — and they grow more slowly than plants with less DNA, because it takes so long to replicate their genome." Based on other evidence, S. Pelech disagrees and provides several examples of species where there is a poor link if any between the size of a genome and the rate of growth, life span or evolutionary selection for these organisms. Read More...