Three views of microbial genomes

We describe here GenomeAtlases as a method for visualising three different aspects of complete microbial chromosomes: repeats, DNA structural characte ristics, and base composition. We have applied this method to all publicly available genomes, and find a general strand preference of global repeats. The atlas for the Mycoplasma genitalium genome is presented as an example, and results from all three views are consistent with known characteristics of the genome. (C) 1999 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.