Commentary: Re-calibration of flow cytometry standards for plant genome size estimation
Sara Lauretta Martin, Tracey James, Elizabeth Sears, Jillian D. Bainard, Tyler W. Smith · 2026
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Description
In a commentary, Sara Lauretta Martin and co-authors push back against a recent paper that re-calibrated the genome sizes of the standard plants used in flow cytometry. That is the method biologists use to measure DNA content. The re-calibration leaned on a newer rice genome assembly. Martin's team argues the new values should not be used, because the work behind them falls short of the field's established best practices.
Their critique is methodological. Calibration bias, they note, shifts estimates consistently but does not create the variation the original paper blamed on it; variation comes from biology and technique. They review the standards themselves: enough nuclei per peak, tight peak variation, and a proper internal standard, with still higher bars for anyone setting a new reference. The commentary defends the existing plant standards and the practices built around them.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sara Lauretta Martin, Tracey James, Elizabeth Sears, Jillian D. Bainard, Tyler W. Smith |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 10 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |