At 50-fold the size of the human genome (3 Gb), the staggeringly huge genome of 147.3 Gb recently discovered in the fern Tmesipteris obliqua is comparable in size to those of the other plant and animal record-holders (i.e., Paris japonica, a flowering plant with a genome size of 148.8 Gb, and Protopterus aethiopicus, a lungfish with a genome of 130 Gb). The synthesis of available information on giant genomes suggests that the biological limit to genome size expansion in eukaryotes may have been reached. We propose several explanations for why the genomes of ferns, flowering plants, and lungfish, all of which have independently undergone dramatic increases in genome size through a variety of mechanisms, do not exceed 150 Gb.

它的大小是人类基因组（3 Gb）的50倍，最近在蕨类固结菌（Tmesipteris obliqua）蕨中发现的惊人的147.3 Gb巨大基因组，其大小可与其他动植物记录保存者（例如，巴黎粳稻，基因组大小为148.8 Gb的开花植物，以及基因组为130 Gb的肺鱼Protopterus aethiopicus）。有关巨型基因组的可用信息的综合表明，可能已经达到了真核生物中基因组大小扩展的生物学极限。对于为什么蕨类植物，开花植物和肺鱼的基因组通过各种机制独立经历了显着的基因组大小显着增加，我们提出了几种解释，为什么它们不超过150 Gb。