The corn genome is ~2.4 gigabases (2.4 billion As, Ts, Cs, and Gs) divided among ten chromosomes. The genome of sorghum, the most closely related species with a sequences genome to maize, is also divided into ten chromosomes, but it’s only less than 800 megabases long, approximately a third the size of maize.
What accounts for the size different? Well since their divergence, maize went through a whole genome duplication, doubling it’s genome to twenty chromosomes (which have since been reduced to ten again, as pieces of chromosomes broke apart and stuck to each other*). Since then a bunch of deletions have also occurred, so only sometimes like 20-30% of the genes from the ancestor of maize and sorghum can still be found in both duplicated regions. Clearly the genome duplication of maize is not responsibly (or at least not solely responsible) for the the enormous size of the maize genome. (more…)