Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a ubiquitous environmental bacterium that is one of the top three causes of opportunistic human infections. A major factor in its prominence as a pathogen is its intrinsic resistance to antibiotics and disinfectants. Here we report the complete sequence of P. aeruginosa strain PAO1. At 6.3 million base pairs, this is the largest bacterial genome sequenced, and the sequence provides insights into the basis of the versatility and intrinsic drug resistance of P. aeruginosa. Consistent with its larger genome size and environmental adaptability, P. aeruginosa contains the highest proportion of regulatory genes observed for a bacterial genome and a large number of genes involved in the catabolism, transport and efflux of organic compounds as well as four potential chemotaxis systems. We propose that the size and complexity of the P. aeruginosa genome reflect an evolutionary adaptation permitting it to thrive in diverse environments and resist the effects of a variety of antimicrobial substances.

The parasite Plasmodium falciparum is responsible for hundreds of millions of cases of malaria, and kills more than one million African children annually. Here we report an analysis of the genome sequence of P. falciparum clone 3D7. The 23-megabase nuclear genome consists of 14 chromosomes, encodes about 5,300 genes, and is the most (A + T)-rich genome sequenced to date. Genes involved in antigenic variation are concentrated in the subtelomeric regions of the chromosomes. Compared to the genomes of free-living eukaryotic microbes, the genome of this intracellular parasite encodes fewer enzymes and transporters, but a large proportion of genes are devoted to immune evasion and host–parasite interactions. Many nuclear-encoded proteins are targeted to the apicoplast, an organelle involved in fatty-acid and isoprenoid metabolism. The genome sequence provides the foundation for future studies of this organism, and is being exploited in the search for new drugs and vaccines to fight malaria.

We have applied “whole-genome shotgun sequencing” to microbial populations collected en masse on tangential flow and impact filters from seawater samples collected from the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda. A total of 1.045 billion base pairs of nonredundant sequence was generated, annotated, and analyzed to elucidate the gene content, diversity, and relative abundance of the organisms within these environmental samples. These data are estimated to derive from at least 1800 genomic species based on sequence relatedness, including 148 previously unknown bacterial phylotypes. We have identified over 1.2 million previously unknown genes represented in these samples, including more than 782 new rhodopsin-like photoreceptors. Variation in species present and stoichiometry suggests substantial oceanic microbial diversity.

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular green alga whose lineage diverged from land plants over 1 billion years ago. It is a model system for studying chloroplast-based photosynthesis, as well as the structure, assembly, and function of eukaryotic flagella (cilia), which were inherited from the common ancestor of plants and animals, but lost in land plants. We sequenced the ∼120-megabase nuclear genome of Chlamydomonas and performed comparative phylogenomic analyses, identifying genes encoding uncharacterized proteins that are likely associated with the function and biogenesis of chloroplasts or eukaryotic flagella. Analyses of the Chlamydomonas genome advance our understanding of the ancestral eukaryotic cell, reveal previously unknown genes associated with photosynthetic and flagellar functions, and establish links between ciliopathy and the composition and function of flagella.

SUMMARY: The major facilitator superfamily (MFS) is one of the two largest families of membrane transporters found on Earth. It is present ubiquitously in bacteria, archaea, and eukarya and includes members that can function by solute uniport, solute/cation symport, solute/cation antiport and/or solute/solute antiport with inwardly and/or outwardly directed polarity. All homologous MFS protein sequences in the public databases as of January 1997 were identified on the basis of sequence similarity and shown to be homologous. Phylogenetic analyses revealed the occurrence of 17 distinct families within the MFS, each of which generally transports a single class of compounds. Compounds transported by MFS permeases include simple sugars, oligosaccharides, inositols, drugs, amino acids, nucleosides, organophosphate esters, Krebs cycle metabolites, and a large variety of organic and inorganic anions and cations. Protein members of some MFS families are found exclusively in bacteria or in eukaryotes, but others are found in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. All permeases of the MFS possess either 12 or 14 putative or established transmembrane α-helical spanners, and evidence is presented substantiating the proposal that an internal tandem gene duplication event gave rise to a primordial MFS protein prior to divergence of the family members. All 17 families are shown to exhibit the common feature of a well-conserved motif present between transmembrane spanners 2 and 3. The analyses reported serve to characterize one of the largest and most diverse families of transport proteins found in living organisms.