Publication Date:
2006-03-25
Description:
Though generally small and gene rich, bacterial genomes are constantly subjected to both mutational and population-level processes that operate to increase amounts of functionless DNA. As a result, the coding potential of bacterial genomes can be substantially lower than originally predicted. Whereas only a single pseudogene was included in the original annotation of the bacterium Escherichia coli, we estimate that this genome harbors hundreds of inactivated and otherwise functionless genes. Such regions will never yield a detectable phenotype, but their identification is vital to efforts to elucidate the biological role of all the proteins within the cell.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ochman, Howard -- Davalos, Liliana M -- GM56120/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Mar 24;311(5768):1730-3.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. hochman@email.arizona.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16556833" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Substitution
;
Computational Biology
;
Escherichia coli K12/*genetics
;
Escherichia coli Proteins/chemistry/genetics
;
*Genes, Bacterial
;
*Genome, Bacterial
;
Genomics
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Mutation
;
*Pseudogenes
;
Selection, Genetic
;
Transcription, Genetic
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
