Abstract
Gloeobacter violaceus PCC 7421 is a unicellular cyanobacterium containing distinctive characteristics. This strain lacks thylakoids, and the light-harvesting and photosynthetic apparatuses are associated with the cytoplasmic membrane. The phycobilisomes are present in the form of cylindrical elements on the membrane. The 16S rDNA sequence shows that it is branched at the base of the cyanobacterial phylogenetic tree. Gloeobacter could have preservations of the independent generic characters from all other cyanobacteria in the course of evolution. With the objective to obtain basic knowledge on the genetic system of Gloeobacter, we determined the nucleotide sequence of the entire genome. The genome consisted of a circular chromosome of 4,659,019 bp long and no plasmid was detected. As of Dec. 2002, the prediction of all the gene components of this organism is in progress.
