Viruses, masters at downsizing.
Viruses are the smallest fruits on the tree of life. Dwarfed by their bacterial and cellular hosts, viruses and their close relatives have long been considered the smallest microbes. The genome of a virus may contain no more than three thousand nucleotides, compared to the three billion base pairs in human genomes. (Lest we feel superior, though, the genomes of some other organisms are much larger than our own.).
Department of Genetics, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
Daniel
D
DiMaio
D005814:Genes, Viral; D059646:Genome Size; D016679:Genome, Viral; D018406:Virus Physiological Phenomena; D014780:Viruses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity