>> The distinction you're looking for is between eukaryotes and
>> non-eukaryotes.
>>
> Uh, yeah. Couldn't think of the proper term though. But, the rest is
> correct. If you don't have excess resources to waste on messing with
> extra baggage, you don't live long if you have it. If you do have the
> "power plants", you can afford to waste more space in the genome on
> things that don't work, duplicate results, etc.

>> I'm not sure I actually agree with this assessment.
>>
> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/how_to_afford_a_big_sloppy_gen.php
>
> As to the cite for prokaryotes not having as many copy errors, I think
> it would be more accurate to say, "They don't *preserve* as many." If
> they did, they would have way more junk DNA, which is precisely what
> they can't afford to have laying around in the first place. The actual
> number of such errors that happen is likely the same, but, when it comes
> to costs, if you can't afford them, you don't see those copied chunks
> sticking around long.

I think we need to distinguish between DNA that isn't used for anything, 
and DNA which actually produces proteins, but they don't do anything 
really useful.

Just having a sequence in your genome doesn't really cost that much. 
Synthesizing it into a protein is much more expensive.

It wouldn't surprise me if non-eukaryotes have fewer genes turned on, 
and possibly smaller genomes, but I doubt that they have radically 
"cleaner" genomes.

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