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Why Do Eukaroytes Have More Non-Coding DNA Or Prokaryotes?

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Molecular biology is branch of science regards biological activity at the molecular level. It covers wide scope of problems corresponding to molecular and cell biology including structural and functional genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, biomedicine, molecular enzymology, molecular virology and molecular immunology, theoretical bases of biotechnology, physics and physical chemistry of proteins and nucleic acids. In this field, there are so much theories and hypothesis that need deeper research. One of them I want to mention is about “Why do Eukaroytes have so much more non-coding DNA than Prokaryotes?”.

To answer this question, we need to understand the definition of non-coding DNA.Non-coding DNA is first called “junk” …show more content…

We all know that eukaryotes have larger size of genome and more complex structure than prokaryotes. In eukaryote, exons (protein- coding) and introns (protein- noncoding) lie side by side in a gene. Intron is found in eukaryotic mRNA, tRNA and rRNA, as well as chloroplast, mitochondrial. In other hand, prokaryote needs small portable genome but still suitable for their short productive and life cycle. To guarantee efficiency of gene expression and reduce genome size, it has to eliminate non-coding DNA in chromosomes. The price for this reduction is losing chance for further revolution due to the lack of non-coding DNA’s support for coding DNA. While eukaryote with existence of introns will improve to be more complex organism (2). From WikiLectures, I got an evidence for that: “While in eukaryotes, the share of non–coding parts of DNA is about 98%, in prokaryotes it is only …show more content…

Since the transcription in prokaryotes is coupled, they do not have time and energy to splicing the non-coding DNA out of the gene. They also completely lack the spliceosomal pathway (3) which served for splicing. Compared to eukaryotes, they have cell nucleus where splicing can be done so non-coding DNA after elimination will accumulate in the cell. While splicing requires much energy, prokaryotes cannot afford it. But a eukaryotic cell can have tens, hundreds or even thousands of mitochondria that have similar energy output to a bacterial cell, while having a genome about 100-500 times smaller (human genome compared to genome of a E. coli

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