There is growing evidence that horizontal gene transfer is a potent evoluti
onary Force in prokaryotes, although exactly how potent is not known. We ha
ve developed a statistical procedure for predicting whether genes of a comp
lete genome have been acquired by horizontal gene transfer. It is based on
the analysis of G+C contents, codon usage, amino acid usage, and gene posit
ion. When we applied this procedure to 17 bacterial complete genomes and se
ven archaeal ones, we found that the percentage of horizontally transferred
genes varied From 1.5% to 14.5%. Archaea and nonpathogenic bacteria had th
e highest percentages and pathogenic bacteria, except for Mycoplasma genita
lium, had the lowest. As reported in the literature, we found that informat
ional genes were less likely to be transferred than operational genes. Most
of the horizontally transferred genes were only present in one or two line
ages. Some of these transferred genes include genes that form part of proph
ages, pathogenecity islands, transposases, integrases, recombinases, genes
present only in one of the two Helicobacter pylori strains, and regions of
genes functionally related. All of these Findings support the important rol
e of horizontal gene transfer in the molecular evolution of microorganisms
and speciation.