Beyond 100 genomes

Abstract

By the end of 2002, we witnessed the landmark submission of the 100th complete genome sequence in the databases. An overview of these genomes reveals certain interesting trends and provides valuable insights into possible future developments.

Figure 1

Cumulative number of protein sequence entries (y-axis) in completed genomes (CoGenT, in blue) and Swiss-Prot (in red) as a function of time (x-axis).

Figure 2

Phylogenetic distribution of genome sequencing projects. Archaea and Bacteria are shown to the phylum level and Eukarya to their first taxonomic branching, with the exception of Metazoa and Fungi. The numbers in parentheses represent the number of completed, published (red) and ongoing (blue) genome projects. The tree is based on the taxonomy database from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Information about ongoing genome projects has been obtained from the Genomes OnLine Database (GOLD) [14], as of 22 January 2003.

Figure 3

Representation of completed genome sequences over time (x-axis) and size (y-axis, in Mb, logarithmic scale) labeled according to their social impact. Genomes from Archaea (squares), Bacteria (circles) and Eukarya (triangles) are colored according to their academic (blue), medical (pink), agricultural (light green), ecological (dark green) and industrial (black) relevance.