What can happen if a cell were to get too large for the amount of DNA it has?

Question

PLEASE HELP!!!

Answer 1

I stand corrected by my friend jon. My initial reaction was that the asker was reversing the problem and wondering if the amount of DNA might get too large to be contained in a cell. So my reaction was that there should be no connection between cell size and the amount of DNA. I was wrong.

Incidentally, some of the things that can happen if the cell gets too large, is that it can become multinucleated (have more than one nucleus so that it can have more than one copy of the nuclear DNA), or replicate the chromosomes to a high copy number.

--- The following is my original (incorrect) answer: ---

?? The size of the cell has nothing to do with the amount of DNA it has.

Some cells are tiny. Sperm cells, for example, are tiny, and yet contain all the DNA necessary to fertilize an egg. Egg cells, on the other hand, are huge, compared to the DNA. The egg of a bird, for example, is a single cell (making the ostrich egg, the largest single cell we know of), but it is not "too large" for the ostrich DNA.

Answer 2

Secretsauce,my friend, no one has more evolutionary knowledge than you, but your functional base of knowledge is in need of expansion. Cells DO get too large for the amount of DNA in them. Simply, when that happens, the amount of DNA in the cell can not keep the cell supplied with adequate amounts of RNA. Go here.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov
articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed
&pubmedid=i4615584

PS "cell size + DNA yeilds further info.

Answer 3

That could not be possible. The DNA is not relative to size but to the number of proteins needed and the complexity of the animal. Size makes no difference.