Loblolly sets record for biggest genome

A giant among trees, the loblolly pine boasts the largest set of genetic blueprints published to date. Even though it’s big on DNA letters, the pine’s instruction book lacks originality: About 82 percent is made of repeating DNA elements.

Researchers first reported deciphering loblolly’s roughly 22 billion letters, or bases, at a conference in 2013 (SN Online: 5/16/13). Now, the team has provided analysis of the loblolly genome in three papers, two in the March issue of GENETICS and one in Genome Biology. Loblolly (Pinus taeda) took the title of largest genome away from wheat, which has 17 billion base pairs.