What the hell!!! 🤯
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RT @CedricFeschotte
This cutie is the Antarctic krill. Its genome is 48 Gb, 15x the human genome! 92% repeats! CMC/CACTA elements, an enigmatic and relatively rare group of DNA transposons in other animals, alone account for 42%!! Why these and why in krill?…🤔😯🤯
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00107-1
https://twitter.com/CedricFeschotte/status/1631760070596755462
@clementgoubert Just wondering, does that mean that cancer is extremely rare in those krill? Since they have a lot of.. well.. 'backups' in their DNA?
@trinsec those 'repeats' are actually repeats of transposons which are for most part selfish... So unfortunately they can't be seen as a backup of the genome, more of a parasite that sometimes may evolve as a partner.
@trinsec it's very hard to predict! But transposons can be both good and evil, so the more there are, and the more are still active (usually many have been rendered inactive, like in our genome) the more 'anything' can happen. Active transposons create change in the DNA, this is evolution! I may lead to pathologies and cancer (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrc.2017.35) but indeed, sometimes it can lead to cancer resistance! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01027-8