R. Himmelreich et al., COMPLETE SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS OF THE GENOME OF THE BACTERIUM MYCOPLASMA-PNEUMONIAE, Nucleic acids research, 24(22), 1996, pp. 4420-4449
The entire genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae M129 has been
sequenced, It has a size of 816 394 base pairs with an average G + C
content of 40.0 mol%, We predict 677 open reading frames (ORFs) and 39
genes coding for various RNA species, Of the predicted ORFs, 75.9% sh
owed significant similarity to genes/proteins of other organisms while
only 9.9% did not reveal any significant similarity to gene sequences
in databases, This permitted us tentatively to assign a functional cl
assification to a large number of ORFs and to deduce the biochemical a
nd physiological properties of this bacterium, The reduction of the ge
nome size of M. pneumoniae during its reductive evolution from ancestr
al bacteria can be explained by the loss of complete anabolic (e.g. no
amino acid synthesis) and metabolic pathways, Therefore, M. pneumonia
e depends in nature on an obligate parasitic lifestyle! which requires
the provision of exogenous essential metabolites, All the major class
es of cellular processes and metabolic pathways are briefly described,
For a number of activities/functions present in M. pneumoniae accordi
ng to experimental evidence, the corresponding genes could not be iden
tified by similarity search, For instance we failed to identify genes/
proteins involved in motility, chemotaxis and management of oxidative
stress.