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Posted

Hello,

some time ago i read an article about how many thousands of years it takes for DNA to double in length. It was news at the time and I expected they would expand on that in the future but now I can't seem find anything about it.

Could someone point me in the right direction ?

Thanks in advance

Posted

I don't think that question makes a lot of sense without further context. Chromosomes can increase in length rapidly due to integration of other DNA (e.g. horizontal gene transfer) and it can also get pruned quite massively. Some organisms (usually simpler ones) have expanded their genome size massively (some amoeba have around 200x of the human genome). Others, such as parasitic organisms, have lost a lot of DNA and have a very compact size.

I.e. there is no mechanism that I am aware of where we would expect a constant expansion over time, if that was the question.

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