Plant & Animal Genomes XIII Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XIII ConferenceJanuary 15-19, 2005
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Michael D Bennett , Ilia J Leitch
The DNA amount in the unreplicated gametic nuclear chromosome complement (1C-value) is highly characteristic for taxa, and varies over 1000-fold between plant species. Species’ DNA amounts (C-value and genome size) are key diversity characters of fundamental significance with many important uses*. It is often difficult to know if a genome size measurement exists for a taxon, or where to find it. Such values are widely scattered in the literature or unpublished. Lists of DNA amounts for flowering plant species, compiled for reference purposes, have been published since 1976 and pooled in an electronic form (the Angiosperm DNA C-values database) since 1997. Databases for gymnosperm, pteridophyte and bryophyte species were added in 2001 to create the Plant DNA C-values database (release 1.0) (http://www.kew.org/cval/homepage) with measurements for 3,864 land plants (embryophytes). These lists and databases have been widely used for comparative studies, and are the main source of information on plant genome sizes cited in the literature. Published lists of angiosperm DNA amounts have been cited over 1,500 times, whilst the electronic database has received over 55,000 hits (over 2 per hour) since 2001. The Plant DNA C-values database was updated late in 2004. Release 3.0 has DNA amounts for c. 5,000 species from over 500 original sources, including first values for 628 angiosperms from 88 original sources*. A novel feature is the inclusion of C-values for 250 algal species*.
*See: Annals of Botany, Volume 95, Special Issue, January 2005, ‘Genome Size in Plants’