Genes, Volume 2, Issue 4

We present draft genome sequences for three strains of Xanthomonas species, each of which was associated with banana plants (Musa species) but is not closely related to the previously sequenced banana-pathogen Xanthomonas campestris pathovar musacear...

The notion of antifragility, an attribute of systems that makes them thrive under variable conditions, has recently been proposed by Nassim Taleb in a business context. This idea requires the ability of such systems to ‘tinker’, i.e., to creatively r...

Alphaproteobacteria show a great versatility in adapting to a broad range of environments and lifestyles, with the association between bacteria and plants as one of the most intriguing, spanning from relatively unspecific nonsymbiotic association (as...

In developed countries, more than half of all cancer patients receive radiotherapy at some stage in the management of their disease. However, a radiation-induced secondary malignancy can be the price of success if the primary cancer is cured or at le...

Plant and human pathogens have evolved disease factors to successfully exploit their respective hosts. Phytopathogens utilize specific determinants that help to breach reinforced cell walls and manipulate plant physiology to facilitate the disease pr...

Pseudomonas savastanoi pv. savastanoi is the causal agent of Olive knot disease, relying on the Type Three Secretion System (TTSS) for its pathogenicity. In this regard, nothing was known about the two other pathovars belonging to this species, pv. n...

Post-transcriptional regulation by trans-encoded sRNAs, for example via base-pairing with target mRNAs, is a common feature in bacteria and influences various cell processes, e.g., response to stress factors. Several studies based on computational an...

The metabolic and regulatory capabilities of an organism are implicit in its protein content. This is often hard to estimate, however, due to ascertainment biases inherent in the available genome annotations. Its complement of recognizable functional...

The functional repertoire of a cell is largely embodied in its proteome, the collection of proteins encoded in the genome of an organism. The molecular functions of proteins are the direct consequence of their structure and structure can be inferred...

Plasmids are mobile genetic elements that provide their hosts with many beneficial traits including in some cases the ability to degrade different aromatic compounds. To fulfill the knowledge gap regarding catabolic plasmids of the Baltic Sea water,...

Genome enabled research has led to a large and ever-growing body of data on Pseudomonas syringae genome variation and characteristics, though systematic capture of this information to maximize access by the research community remains a significant ch...

Studies on the experimental evolution of microorganisms, on their in vivo evolution (mainly in the case of bacteria producing chronic infections), as well as the availability of multiple full genomic sequences, are placing bacteria in the playground...

Both centromeric alpha-satellite sequences as well as centromeric protein A (CENP-A) are highly variable in eukaryotes. CENP-A, a histone H3 variant, is thought to act as the epigenetic “mark” for assembly of centromeric proteins. While most of the h...

Protein sequence, structure, and function are inherently linked through evolution and population genetics. Our knowledge of protein structure comes from solved structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), our knowledge of sequence through sequences fou...

The complete nucleotide sequence of the genome of the soybean symbiont Bradyrhizobium japonicum strain USDA6^T was determined. The genome of USDA6^T is a single circular chromosome of 9,207,384 bp. The genome size is similar to that of the genome of an...

Previously we revealed that flagellin proteins in Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci 6605 (Pta 6605) were glycosylated with a trisaccharide, modified viosamine (mVio)-rhamnose-rhamnose and that glycosylation was required for virulence. We further identi...

Chromobacterium violaceum is a gram-negative betaproteobacterium that has been isolated from various Brazilian ecosystems. Its genome contains the cyn operon, which gives it the ability to metabolize highly toxic cyanate into ammonium and carbon diox...

Type IV pili (T4P) are hair-like appendages found on the surface of a wide range of bacteria belonging to the β-, γ-, and δ-Proteobacteria, Cyanobacteria and Firmicutes. They constitute an efficient device for a particular type of bacterial surface m...

The throughput and single-base resolution of RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) have contributed to a dramatic change in transcriptomic-based inquiries and resulted in many new insights into the complexities of bacterial transcriptomes. RNA-Seq could contribut...

Despite intensive investigation for decades, the principle of higher-order organization of mitotic chromosomes is unclear. Here, I describe a novel model that emphasizes a critical role of interactions of homologous DNA repeats (repetitive elements;...

Considering how biological macromolecules first evolved, probably within a marine environment, it seems likely the very earliest peptides were not encoded by nucleic acids, or at least not via the genetic code as we know it. An objective of the prese...