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Williams, Bryony A.; Lee, Renny C.; Becnel, James J.; Weiss, Louis M.; Fast, Naomi M.; Keeling, Patrick J. (Patrick John), 1969-

BioMed Central

Background: Microsporidia are well known models of extreme nuclear genome reduction and compaction. The smallest microsporidian genomes have received the most attention, but genomes of different species range in size from 2.3 Mb to 19.5 Mb and the nature of the larger genomes remains unknown. Results Here we have undertaken genome sequence surveys of two diverse microsporidia, Brachiola algerae and Edhazardia aedis. In both species we find very large intergenic regions, many transposable elements, and a low gene-density, all in contrast to the small, model microsporidian genomes. We also find no recognizable genes that are not also found in other surveyed or sequenced microsporidian genomes. Conclusion Our results demonstrate that microsporidian genome architecture varies greatly between microsporidia. Much of the genome size difference could be accounted for by non-coding material, such as intergenic spaces and retrotransposons, and this suggests that the forces dictating genome size may vary across the phylum.

Text

2015-12-25

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/56092

BMC Genomics. 2008 Apr 29;9(1):200

Reviewed

Williams et al.

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