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Copyright

Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee

Published On

2025-02-28

Page Range

pp. 65–106

Language

  • English

Print Length

42 pages

3. The genome

how much DNA?

Chapter of: Bacterial Genomes: Trees and Networks(pp. 65–106)
The first bacterial genomes were sequenced in the mid-1990s. The first few bacterial genomes led to research attempting to find the minimal genetic requirement of cellular life. Several pared-down bacterial genomes, belonging to endosymbionts of insects, were discovered and characterized. It became clear that bacterial genomes differed from the genomes of higher eukaryotes in supporting very high gene densities. The genomes of higher eukaryotes often carry large chunks of ‘junk’ DNA, a phenomenon attributed to their relatively small population sizes which render selection against non-functional but metabolically expensive DNA weak.

Contributors

Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee

(author)
Researcher and Associate Professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7028-1803
http://www.ncbs.res.in/aswin

Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee is a researcher and Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a centre of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bangalore, India. His lab is interested in fundamental aspects of the function and evolution of bacterial genomes and gene regulatory networks. His career in the sciences started off with a Bachelors of Technology at Anna University, Chennai, India, during which a lot of time left alone to explore and break things in the bioinformatics laboratory of Professor Gautam Pennathur and in the experimental microbiology and protein engineering laboratory of Professor Sankaran encouraged him to take up research for a career. He then pursued research as an intern, a PhD student and then briefly a postdoc with Nicholas Luscombe at EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK (and St John’s College and Girton College, University of Cambridge). He has been with NCBS since December 2010, his research here funded over the years by the Department of Atomic Energy (Govt of India) core support to TIFR and NCBS, Department of Biotechnology, Department of Science and Technology and Science and Engineering Research Board (all Govt of India), CEFIPRA and DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance. Beyond science, he enjoys making music, painting watercolour landscapes and reading classic crime and fantasy fiction and popular history.