| Streptomyces bacteria produce many of today's antibiotics. Much research focuses on genetically engineering these organisms to produce more antibiotics or novel antibiotics. The genome sequence of Streptomyces coelicolor M145 (Bentley, Chater et al. 2002) provides valuable information that aids in our understanding of basic biological processes and allows scientists to more effectively study Streptomyces. In the research presented in this thesis, we learn more about the genomes of several closely related Streptomyces strains by using DNA microarrays.; Until this study, the genotypic differences between commonly used laboratory strains of S. coelicolor were mostly unknown. We show that 12% of the chromosomal genes are duplicated in many strains previously thought to be the same and that five Streptomyces wild type strains lack 7% of the sequenced S. coelicolor M145 genes. These findings have important implications for future research. The strains that have the duplication may be difficult to study via traditional loss of function mutagenesis techniques because the second copy of the genes in the duplication could complement potential mutants. Additionally, one of the five wild type strains is commonly used for industrial enzyme expression and has several known phenotypic differences from the sequenced M145 strain. We have now identified the genetic differences causing these phenotypes. |
