The Value of Complete Microbial Genome Sequencing (You Get What You Pay For)

Since the publication of the complete Haemophilus influenzae genome sequence in July 1995 (4), the field of microbiology has been one of the largest beneficiaries of the breakthroughs in genomics and computational biology that made this accomplishment possible. When the 1.8-Mbp H. influenzae project began in 1994, it was not certain that the whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy would succeed because it had never been attempted on any piece of DNA larger than an average lambda clone (∼40 kbp) (9).