Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

SS04 Environmental Microbial Genomics (Environmental and Disciplinary Connections)

Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001, Time: 9:45:00 AM

Location: Brazos

Meeks, J, C, Section of Microbiology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA, jcmeeks@ucdavis.edu

THE GENOME OF THE FILAMENTOUS NITROGEN-FIXING, SYMBIOTIC CYANOBACTERIUM NOSTOC PUNCTIFORME

Nostoc punctiforme has a complex life style as exemplified by multiple developmental alternatives of its vegetative cells, its ability to establish a symbiosis with plants, its capacity for facultative heterotrophic growth in aquatic and terrestrial habitats, and it is amenable to genetic analysis. The greater than 9.7 Mb genome of N. punctiforme ATCC 29133 is being sequenced by the Joint Genome Institute with support of the DOE (http://www.jgi.doe.gov/). Preliminary analyses identified 7,478 putative genes. Seventy-one percent (5,324) of the putative genes have sequence similarity to previously recognized genes in the current database of all organisms, while twenty-nine percent (2,164) are unique to N. punctiforme. Forty-five percent (3,328) of the genes putatively encode proteins with known or probable known function. This latter value is two-three times the number of known genes in the unicellular cyanobacteria Synechocystis PCC6803 and Synechococcus WH8102. Some of the excess coding capacity in N. punctiforme is seen in multiple copies of regulatory genes and gene products. Comparative aspects of the sequence will be presented relative to other photosynthetic prokaryotes.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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