Symbiont Sinorhizobium fredii HH103 Genome Sequence of the Soybean

strains with a very diverse host range (7,9). HH103 is the best-studied fast-growing soybean symbiont.Its genome sequence will expose further details about the ge-netic basis of growth properties, symbiotic interaction, andhost range, which are relevant for agriculture.For whole-genome sequencing, the GS FLX system (RocheDiagnostics) was used. Shotgun (GS FLX Titanium) and longpaired-end (GS FLX standard) sequencing resulted in a 37-foldgenomecoverage.ReadswereassembledwiththeNewblersoft-ware (Roche Diagnostics), which gave rise to 59 scaffolds and241 contigs. For gap closure, a fosmid library was prepared. Bysequencing of 1,114 insert ends, about 90 PCR products, and byusing about 350 primer walkings (ABI 3730xl DNA analyzer),five out of six replicons could be finished completely using theConsed (4) software package. Due to a high abundance of re-peated sequences, five gaps remain in the symbiotic plasmidpSfHH103d. For an automated annotation of the genome,GenDB was used (8). Replicon sizes (and G C content) of thechromosome and the plasmids pSfHH103a, pSfHH103b,pSfHH103c, pSfHH103d, and pSfHH103e are 4,305,723 bp(62.61%), 24,036 bp (58.21%), 61,880 bp (58.47%), 144,082 bp(58.68%), ca. 589.4 kb (59.55%), and 2,096,125 bp (62.38%),respectively. The chromosome consists of 3,955 protein-coding sequences as well as 53 tRNA and 3