For the first time it also provided sequences of the substantial proportion of centromeric DNA of each of the five chromosomes. The number of genes predicted to be carried by the whole genome comprising the five chromosomes, was 25,498 in genomic DNA sequences that were only 115,409,949 base pairs (the whole genome being about 125 x 106 base pairs). Therefore, the number of genes was higher than those predicted for either the fruitfly (19,099) or those for C. elegans(13,601), the only two higher eukaryotes that were completely sequences by the end of the year 2000.

Duplications and gene redundancy
In Arabidopsisgenome, most estimates suggest the presence of as many as about 26,000 genes (double the number present in C. elegans), although the functions of atleast 50% of these genes were still unknown, when the sequence was published in December, 2000. Surprisingly, 70% of the Arabidopsisgenome is duplicated, the extensive duplications involving all the five chromosomes thus reducing the number of unique genes that differ from each other to less than 15,000.