Wednesday, April 28, 2021

[upahcekf] longest continuous DNA

what is the longest DNA molecule found in nature?  this is not the organism with the largest genome, because genomes are usually broken into multiple chromosomes.  (very large genomes are often the result of polyploidy, so lots and lots of chromosomes.)

largest or longest single chromosome known so far?  sequenced so far?  the latter might be human chromosome 1 at 249 million base pairs.

no cheating with genetic modification, e.g., splicing very long DNA or RNA into a microrganism.  (is that even possible?)

inspired by, what is the most interesting molecule?

incidentally, a DNA molecule (at least, one stand) can be chemically named with a concatenated word (but can't find details how).  the full chemical name of human chromosome 1 is therefore one of the longest words in the English language, certainly one of the most interesting long words.

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