Hello, I am resequencing the genome of the cattle tick, Rhipicephalus microplus, and several years ago had expert collaborators who used reassociation kinetics to estimate the genome size as 7.1 Gbp. Recently, I had the opportunity to collaborate with an expert on flow cytometry and he did a genome size estimation of a related cattle tick species, Rhipicephalus annulatus, and discovered it to be around 3 Gbp. So he determined the genome size of my cattle tick, R. microplus, by flow cytometry and determined this too was around 3 Gbp.
Anyone have some explanations that might help me understand how these two genome size estimates for the same species of tick could be so far apart (7.1 Gbp vs. 3 Gbp is a pretty big difference, I think)?
Thanks!
Hi, I don't have a good answer for that, but if you are resequencing or have sequencing data: We have just developed a method called Genomescope that aims to asses the genome length (repeats and unique sequences) as well as heterozygosity rate. Its simple to use see: http://qb.cshl.edu/genomescope/
The current preprint: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/28/075978
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