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Friday 27 June 2014

Anucleate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_blood_cell

Nucleus

Erythrocytes in mammals are anucleate when mature, meaning that they lack a cell nucleus. In comparison, the erythrocytes of other vertebrates have nuclei; the only known exceptions are salamanders of the Batrachoseps genus and fish of the Maurolicus genus with closely related species.
The elimination of the nucleus in vertebrate erythrocytes has been offered as an explanation for the subsequent accumulation of non-coding DNA in the genome.The argument runs as follows: Efficient gas transport requires erythrocytes to pass through very narrow capillaries, and this constrains their size. In the absence of nuclear elimination, the accumulation of repeat sequences is constrained by the volume occupied by the nucleus, which increases with genome size.

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