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misbell37
9th September 2011 - 10:13 PM
I wonder what the bare minimum is for a genome that could support life?

Candidatus Carsonella ruddii (a bacteria), has the smallest genome of any life (now known). It was shown that the genome consists of a circular chromosome of 159,662 base pairs. The number of predicted genes was 182, also the lowest on record.
this is according to: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This is excluding mitochondrial life and viruses, both which need a host cell to survive, (I am assuming).

Can life exist without a cell wall?
Also, would the first life need a cell wall or just the ability to inhabit some type of organic foam, create energy from it's surroundings, replicate, maybe hibernate, and maybe create a ionic molecule that could attract a proto-cell-wall.
Robittybob1
17th October 2011 - 07:57 AM
QUOTE (misbell37+Sep 9 2011, 10:13 PM)
I wonder what the bare minimum is for a genome that could support life?

Candidatus Carsonella ruddii (a bacteria), has the smallest genome of any life (now known). It was shown that the genome consists of a circular chromosome of 159,662 base pairs. The number of predicted genes was 182, also the lowest on record.
this is according to: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This is excluding mitochondrial life and viruses, both which need a host cell to survive, (I am assuming).

Can life exist without a cell wall?
Also, would the first life need a cell wall or just the ability to inhabit some type of organic foam, create energy from it's surroundings, replicate, maybe hibernate, and maybe create a ionic molecule that could attract a proto-cell-wall.

Sounds like a good project for a PHD student to answer.

One more question could a short genome like that be optimised by having DNA strands that can be read from both ends and from both sides of the double helix? Is only one side of the double helix ever read? Imagine if it was like Matter and Antimatter. Double sided and "spin" - readable from either end.
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