Talk:C-value enigma

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The article on non-coding DNA notes that there is an amoeba with 200 times as much DNA as a human, and that genome size does not necessarily correlate with organism complexity. When I saw this, I recalled a shirt I saw when I was in college: "Everything I learned in life, I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains".

My question is: Does the genome size correlate with genome age?

-Joe

Nope. Evolver 00:35, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

OK. I have another question then. How many genomes are there and how many are in databases? -Joe

How many genomes? As many as there are species (maybe 10-100 million); or, if you look at it another way, as many as there are individual organisms; or, yet another way, as many as there are cells making up those organisms. What databases do you mean? Genome sequences? Genome sizes? Chromosome numbers? Evolver 20:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Change title to "genome size paradox"

Of the (small) fraction of scientist who know the term C-value paradox/enigma none could explain to me the meaning of C-value? The term obscures the meaning more than it helps to spread the idea. Therefore, I would like to see the title of this wikipedia entry changed to genome size paradox. This incorporates the crux of this enigma and is not just a relic. I just put this here as a suggestion to the more specialised scientists working on this entry.

- Jasu, Dec 2005

Sorry, but no one uses the term "genome size paradox", either in common language or technical publication. So, this article should definitely stay "C-value enigma". There is a separate entry for C-value in wikipedia that you can consult. The short definition is that it is the amount of DNA in a haploid nucleus, which is essentially Constant within species. Anyone who works on genomes will be familiar with the term "C-value paradox", so this is not an obscure concept, even if this does constitute a "small fraction of scientists" (I suspect just about any specialized jargon will be known only to a "small fraction" of the overall scientific community!) 209.29.83.124 14:27, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Correct but nobody here uses the term "C-value enigma" either. We use "C-value paradox" (or rather, in german, C-value paradoxon, but we also "translate" this into english, and the english literature we used consistently refers to the "C-value paradox".) To me it sounds as if someone tried to write an article in favour of the word C-value enigma, when everything else contradicts that choice. 84.112.136.52 (talk) 18:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Is this a proper thing to say (in C-value paradox as well):

Non-coding DNA has many functions yet to be discovered.

Is it possible to know it has undiscovered functions? That may be postulated, but certainly not proven IMO.

Verbage sounds contradictory

In one paragraph, the wording sounds contradictory to me (who admittedly knows almost nothing about the topic) "The discovery of non-coding DNA in the early 1970s resolved the C-value paradox...Though now it is known that only a fragment of the genome consists of genes, the paradox remains unsolved."

Perhaps this article needs tagging with 'needs expert input' or whatever that tag is, to clear up the verbage on the C-value enigma (or paradox, or whatever it's called.)

Yeah, what the hell? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.45.165 (talk) 22:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The paradox is unsolved. The revelation that much of the DNA was noncoding did not "solve" the problem. It still does not explain why there is so much variation in c-values. There appears to be no correlation in c-value and complexity, or taxa, etc. I am a genetics and evolution student, and they still teach this.129.59.47.19 (talk) 14:32, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

In addition, this is historically incorrect. King and Jukes in 1969 - before the term c-value paradox had been coined and then apparently solved - stated: "Perhaps the most compelling argument for the existence of superfluous DNA is the wide range in the DNA content of vertebrate cells (40, 41). The average mammalian cell contains more than twice the DNA of the chicken cell and almost four times that of the cell of the gar pike. The cell of the bullfrog contains twice as much DNA as that of the toad, and two and a half times as much as that of a man, while the cell of a lungfish has a DNA content 17 times that of the human cell and almost 60 times that of the pike cell. Can it be that these wide divergences in DNA content reflect wide divergences in the number of functional genes? This hardly seems likely." (p 794). They also stated: "it is probable that not much more than 1 percent of mammalian DNA codes for proteins." 156.62.3.21 (talk) 00:54, 11 June 2014 (UTC)