They rebuilt the virus and host bacterial genome sequences from the natural acidophilic biofilms.

For example, an antibiotic target may be absent from the bacterial genome.

With the sequences of many organisms available for analysis, scientists, through their investigations, began to challenge some of the earlier tenants of bacterial genome structure.

These results indicate that genome size reduction can occur relatively rapidly and loss of certain genes can speed up the process of bacterial genome compaction.

They consist of short sequences that originate from viral genomes and have been incorporated into the bacterial genome.