For bacteria, the primary genetic barrier against the genetic exchange of DNA that is not self-transmissible is dissimilarity in the bacterial DNA sequences concerned. Genetic exchange by homologous recombination is frequent among close bacterial relatives and recent experiments have shown that it can enable the uptake of closely linked nonhomologous foreign DNA. Artificial vectors are… [Read More]

The cardiovascular risk factor LPA has a puzzling distribution among mammals, its presence being limited to a subset of primates and a member of the insectivore lineage, the hedgehog. To explore the evolutionary history of LPA, we performed extensive genomic sequence comparisons of multiple species with and without an LPA gene product, such as human,… [Read More]

Annotators of the human genome are increasingly exploiting comparisons with genomes at both the distal and proximal evolutionary edges of the vertebrate tree. Despite the sequence similarity between primates, comparisons among members of this clade are beginning to identify primate-as well as human-specific functional elements. At the distal evolutionary extreme, comparing the human genome to… [Read More]

Analysis of sequence variation among members of a single species offers a potential approach to identify functional DNA elements responsible for biological features unique to that species. Due to its high rate of allelic polymorphism and ease of genetic manipulability, we chose the sea squirt, Gona intestinalis, to explore intraspecies sequence comparisons for genome annotation…. [Read More]

The lactic acid bacterium Streptococcus thermophilus is widely used for the manufacture of yogurt and cheese. This dairy species of major economic importance is phylogenetically close to pathogenic streptococci, raising the possibility that it has a potential for virulence. Here we report the genome sequences of two yogurt strains of S. thermophilus. We found a… [Read More]

Background: Mitochondria contain small genomes that are physically separate from those of nuclei. Their comparison serves as a model system for understanding the processes of genome evolution. Although hundreds of these genome sequences have been reported, the taxonomic sampling is highly biased toward vertebrates and arthropods, with many whole phyla remaining unstudied. This is the… [Read More]

We have determined the complete sequence of the mitochondrial genome of the scaphopod mollusk Graptacme eborea (14,492 nts) and completed the sequence of the mitochondrial genome of the bivalve mollusk Mytilus edulis (16,740 nts). (The name Graptacme eborea is a revision of the species formerly known as Dentalium eboreum.) G. eborea mtDNA contains the 37… [Read More]