Abstract
Once again, this month, three microbial genomes have been published in the 4 weeks since the last Genome Update was written. However, in contrast to last month (Ussery & Hallin, 2004), when all three genomes were bacterial, this time each genome represents a different superkingdom of life. The three genomes include that of a methanogen isolated from a salt-marsh sediment (the archaean Methanococcus maripaludis), that of a soil-dwelling bacillus found to cause cheese spoilage (the bacterium Bacillus cereus) and a yeast genome (the eukaryote Ashbya gossypii).
Methanococcus maripaludis is a mesophilic, methane-producing, nitrogen-fixing member of the Archaea; it is a strict anaerobe and grows in the presence of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The Methanococcus maripaludis S2 genome (Hendrickson et al., GenBank accession no. BX950229) is 1 661 137 bp long (see Table 1⇓), just a few thousand base pairs shorter than that of the thermophile Methanocaldococcus jannaschii DSM 2661T, and in general it is one of the smaller archaeal genomes. The Methanococcus maripaludis genome contains few DNA repeats and has three rRNA operons.