Abstract
Analysis of large scale diversity in bacterial genomes has mainly focused on elements such as pathogenicity islands, or more generally, genomic islands. These comprise numerous genes and confer important phenotypes, which are present or absent depending on strains. We report that despite this widely accepted notion, most diversity at the species level is composed of much smaller DNA segments, 20 to 500 bp in size, which we call microdiversity.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | R45 |
Journal | Genome Biology |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2010 |