Question

3. Petrov and colleagues have suggested that genome sizes may be determined by the spontaneous DNA deletion rate. What evidence supports this hypothesis? How (exactly) are such deletion rates measured? Does the “deletion rate” refer to the number of deletions, or the length of those deletions, or both, or neither? Why?

Answer 1

Evidence he has given that genome of c. elegans is small and it is been seen that high rate of large deletion. Other example is arabidopsis geome undergoes large deletion than tobacco plant whose genome is much bigger than tobacco plant.

Deletion rate were measured by non long terminal repeats that were used to perform phylogenetic analysis that is done by maximum likelihood method.

Here, deletion rate refer to both the number and length of deletion. As, both are required for finding rate of deletion.