DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop VIII
February 27-March 2, 2000  Santa Fe, NM

119. The Caulobacter crescentus Genome Sequencing Project

Tamara Feldblyum¹, William C. Nierman¹, Nikhil Phadke², Peter Ulintz², and Janine Maddox²

¹The Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, MD and ²Department of Biology, University of Michigan

tamaraf@tigr.org

Caulobacter crescentus is a member of the alpha subclass of the proteobacteria which also include Rickettsia, Rhizobium, Agrobacterium and Brucella species. It is the most prevalent non-pathogenic bacterium in nutrient-poor fresh water streams and is also found in marine environments. It is one of the organisms responsible for sewage treatment. Caulobacters are being modified for use as a bioremediation agent for removing heavy metals from wastewater.

Caulobacter crescentus has been extensively studied because it exhibits a well-defined developmental pattern that is independent of environmental stress. The free-swimming morphologically distinct swarmer cell progresses to an anchored stalked cell, the only cell type capable of genome replication and cell division. Cell division of the stalked cell splits out a swarmer daughter cell.

C. crescentus has a genome size of 4 Mb, with G+C content of about 66.5%. Tremendous power for genome assembly was brought to this project through the use of a 2 and 10 kb insert size 2 plasmid library strategy. In sequencing this organism at TIGR, 65,588 random sequence reads from both ends of plasmid clones were used to assemble the genome into only five groups comprising essentially all of the genome sequence. A preliminary review of C. crescentus ORFs revealed by the sequence is provided.