www.lesswrong.com/posts/wgqcExv9AgN5MuJuY/bioanchors-2-electric-bacilli
1 correction found
making it the smallest genome of any self-replicating organism
JCVI-syn3.0 (2016) is not the smallest genome of any self-replicating organism; naturally occurring bacteria with far smaller genomes were known earlier (e.g., Carsonella ruddii at 159,662 bp).
Full reasoning
The post implies that the 2016 JCVI work resulted in the smallest genome of any self-replicating organism.
However, the 2016 JCVI minimal-genome paper describes JCVI-syn3.0 as 531 kilobase pairs (kbp) and explicitly qualifies the “smallest” claim to autonomously replicating cells found in nature—not all self-replicating organisms.
Separately, a 2006 Science paper reports the genome of the bacterial endosymbiont Carsonella ruddii as 159,662 base pairs (~160 kbp), describing it as “by far the smallest… bacterial genome yet characterized.” This genome size is much smaller than 531 kbp, which means JCVI-syn3.0 cannot be “the smallest genome of any self-replicating organism” as written in the post.
So, the “smallest genome” wording in the post is too broad and is contradicted by published genome sizes of naturally occurring (self-replicating) bacteria with substantially smaller genomes.
2 sources
- Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome - PubMed
JCVI-syn3.0 (531 kilobase pairs, 473 genes), which has a genome smaller than that of any autonomously replicating cell found in nature.
- The 160-kilobase genome of the bacterial endosymbiont Carsonella - PubMed
Carsonella ruddii... consists of a circular chromosome of 159,662 base pairs... It is by far the smallest and most AT-rich bacterial genome yet characterized.