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New feel for new phyla
Author(s) -
Galperin Michael Y.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
environmental microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.954
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1462-2920
pISSN - 1462-2912
DOI - 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2008.01699.x
Subject(s) - phylum , biology , verrucomicrobia , evolutionary biology , genome , clan , organism , genetics , gene , 16s ribosomal rna , bacteroidetes , sociology , anthropology
According to the dictionary, the Latin term ‘phylum’ comes from Greek phylon (ϕũλov), which means ‘race, tribe or clan’ and is unrelated to either philia (ϕiλiα) meaning ‘love, affection’ or to the ‘feel’, which comes from Old English felan ‘to touch’. These similarly sounding words illustrate a key problem of systematic microbiology: How can we extract useful information from short sequence fragments and not be swayed by superficial similarities? One of the most useful approaches has been binning together sequences from related microorganisms, even if the nature of these organisms remained unknown. This resulted in a number of candidate microbial phyla that still have no cultivated representatives (Hugenholtz et al., 1998). Extensive sequencing has been the only way to get a ‘feel’ of these organisms, find out at least some information about their physiology and distribution in the environment. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get a complete genome sequence of the previously uncharacterized organism and use the power of comparative genome analysis to deduce its features.