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Figure 1 | Genome Biology

Figure 1

From: Between a chicken and a grape: estimating the number of human genes

Figure 1

Gene counts in a variety of species. Viruses, the simplest living entities, have only a handful of genes but are exquisitely well adapted to their environments. Bacteria such as Escherichia coli have a few thousand genes, and multicellular plants and animals have two to ten times more. Beyond these simple divisions, the number of genes in a species bears little relation to its size or to intuitive measures of complexity. The chicken and grape gene counts shown here are based on draft genomes [50, 51] and may be revised substantially in the future.

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