Genome-Based Construction of the Metabolic Pathways of Orientia tsutsugamushi and Comparative Analysis within the Rickettsiales Order.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Comparative and Functional Genomics Volume 2008, Article ID 623145, 14 pages doi:10.1155/2008/623145 Review Article Genome-Based Construction of the Metabolic Pathways of Orientia tsutsugamushi and Comparative Analysis within the Rickettsiales Order Chan-Ki Min,1 Jae-Seong Yang,2 Sanguk Kim,2 Myung-Sik Choi,1 Ik-Sang Kim,1 and Nam-Hyuk Cho1 1 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine and Institute of Endemic Diseases, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and Medical Research Center, 28 Yongon-Dong, Chongno-Gu, Seoul 110-799, South Korea 2 Division of Molecular and Life Science, School of Interdisciplinary Bioscience and Bioengineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 790-784, South Korea Correspondence should be addressed to Nam-Hyuk Cho, chonh@snu.ac.kr Received 13 November 2007; Revised 29 January 2008; Accepted 4 March 2008 Recommended by Antoine Danchin Orientia tsutsugamushi, the causative agent of scrub typhus, is an obligate intracellular bacterium that belongs to the order of Rickettsiales. Recently, we have reported that O. tsutsugamushi has a unique genomic structure, consisting of highly repetitive sequences, and suggested that it may provide valuable insight into the evolution of intracellular bacteria. Here, we have used genomic information to construct the major metabolic pathways of O. tsutsugamushi and performed a comparative analysis of the metabolic genes and pathways of O. tsutsugamushi with other members of the Rickettsiales order. While O. tsutsugamushi has the largest genome among the members of this order, mainly due to the presence of repeated sequences, its metabolic pathways have been highly streamlined. Overall, the metabolic pathways of O. tsu