The Beautifully Simple but Intriguingly Complex World of Small Genomes
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73017 USA
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
In his review of the Small Genome Meeting in 1997, Eugene Koonin remarked that we have quite a bit of “... ignorance about the simple cell (Escherichia coli) that has been the primary object of molecular biology for several decades.” This message was borne out again this year at the recent conference on Microbial Genomes II: Sequencing, Functional Characterization and Comparative Genomics (The Institute for Genomic Research Genomic Series, Hilton Head, SC, January 31–February 3 1998), where experienced sequencers and microbiologists continued to exchange information about the latest disoveries in genomics and comparative genomics, that is, polygenomics. As Claire Fraser cochair of the meeting, pointed out in her introductory remarks, the emphasis of this year’s meeting was to garner new biological insights from these genomic sequences. With the sequence of seven genomes completed in 1997 and >50 small genome sequencing projects under way worldwide, it is anticipated that at least 25–30 genomes will be completed this year. The small genome sequencing projects reported at the plenary sessions are summarized as supplementary material at www.genome.org or can be obtained at eitherhttp://www.mcs.anl.gov/home/gaasterl/genomes.html orhttp://www.tigr.org/tdb/mdb/mdb.html.
With the availability of the relatively large number of sequences available and with many more anticipated, comparative genomics now is a fait accompli. This was exemplified by Fred Blattner’s report comparing sample sequences from the bacterial pathogens E. coli O157:H7, E. coli CFT073, and Yersinia pestisto the completed genomic sequence of E. coli K-12 in an attempt to identify unique regions that might be responsible for pathogenesis. In E. coli O157:H7, 300 unique regions were identified that possibly could define a group of virulence genes (a pathosphere) that interact with the host; 10% are large pathogenicity islands and 90% are smaller segments. Claire Fraser reported a comparative analysis of the single circular spirochetes Treponema pallidum …
