They found an amazing creature that even outruns humans

The genetic material, or genome, of a fern is about 100 meters long when unfolded, which exceeds all known DNA. According to scientists, there is nothing similar to this tiny plant, so it was even included in the Guinness Book of Records.

But how does it survive with so much DNA?

The genome represents the complete hereditary information of an organism, which it is encoded in DNAthat is it contains all the information necessary for the development and growth of an organism. Many plants have large genomes, and scientists want to find out why. They hope to understand how this affects their functioning and the risk of extinction.

Known as Tmesipteris oblanceolate, the fern belongs to an ancient group of plants that evolved long before dinosaurs appeared on Earth. It is found only in New Caledonia and some neighboring islands in the Pacific Ocean, where it grows on the trunks and branches of rainforest trees. The researchers extracted genetic material from specimens collected in New Caledonia. They measured how much dye binds to the DNA, the more dye, the larger the genome. It was found that the fern has a genome with a record size of 160 billion base pairs of DNA, which would be about 100 meters long when unfolded. By comparison, the human genome contains about three billion base pairs and stretches about two meters.

A real record holder

The fern currently holds three Guinness World Records for largest genome, largest plant genome, and largest fern genome. This tiny plant boasts 50 times more DNA than humans, showing how much we still don’t know about the plant world.

Genome size is highly variable. Record holders in the animal world include, among others, some lungfish and salamanders, whose genomes are around 120 billion base pairs. Among the plants the oak tree, on the other hand, has a relatively small genome, its DNA stretched out would only reach 66 cm.

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