After efforts of one year or more, Chinese scientists recently determined the complete sequence of a kind of thermophilic bacteria, with the rate of coverage reaching 100 percent, and the rate of accuracy 99.99 percent, thereby obtaining the first microbial genome "map". This marks an important step forward taken by China in its genome studies.
By far, scientists have discovered 2,808 genes, 1,481 of them are genes with known functions, while the functions of the remaining 1,327 remain unknown.
Researchers have found that this kind of bacteria is a new bacterium that has never been reported internationally.
Scientists with the Human Genome Center, Institute of Microbiology and Institute of Bio-physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have begun to determine the DNA sequence of this kind of thermophilic bacteria since May 1999 and have found that it has more than 2.6 million base-pairs.
(People's Daily 02/15/2001)
