Genome Size of Three Brazilian Flies from the Sciaridae Family
Genetics and Molecular Biology, 28, 4, 743-748 (2005) Copyright by the Brazilian Society of Genetics. Printed in Brazil www.sbg.org.br Short Communication Genome size of three Brazilian flies from the Sciaridae family Cecília Ferreira Saccuti1, Maria Albertina de Miranda Soares2, José Ricardo Penteado Falco1 and Maria Aparecida Fernandez1 1Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Departamento de Biologia Celular e Genética, Maringá, PR, Brazil. 2Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa, Departamento de Biologia Estrutural, Molecular e Genética, Ponta Grossa, PR, Brazil. Abstract We determined the genome size of the Brazilian sciarid flies Bradysia hygida, Rhynchosciara americana and Trichosia pubescens (Diptera: Sciaridae) using absorbance measurements of Feulgen-stained nuclei belonging to these species (and chicken erythrocytes as a standard) to calculate the amount of DNA in picograms (pg) and the number of base pairs (bp), or C-value, for each of these species. The C-values were:3x108 bp (0.31 pg) for B. hygida;3.6x108 bp (0.37 pg) for R. americana;and1x109 bp (1.03 pg) for T. pubescens. The sciarids investigated in this work had considerably higher C-values than the average for previously described dipteran species, including D. melanogaster. Key words: genome size, Feulgen reaction, Sciaridae, Bradysia hygida, Rhynchosciara americana, Trichosia pubescens, Brazilian flies. Received: March 15, 2004; Accepted: March 22, 2005. The determination of the genome size of an organism Birds, reptiles and mammals display only a small not only provides important data relevant to both the classi- variation in the DNA content within classes, with the ge- fication of the organism and for comparative studies of the nome size of birds being the most conserved (Tiersch and structural genome and evolution (Hardie et al., 2002) but is Wachtel, 1991).
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