Table 1.

Percentages of different functional classes of genes in various bacterial pathogens

Pathogen	% Unknown functiona	% Known functionb
Helicobacter pylori	44.41	55.59
Pseudomonas aeruginosa	64.67	35.33
Salmonella typhimurium	46.53	53.47
Staphylococcus aureus	42.17	57.83
Streptococcus pneumoniae	36.57	63.43
Vibrio cholerae	45.37	54.63
Yersinia pestis	35.75	64.25
Allc	52.59	47.41

^aThe percentage of genes of unknown function comprises the functional classes defined by the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) within the Comprehensive Microbial Resource (CMR) database (http://www.tigr.org/tigr-scripts/CMR2/CMRHomePage.spl). Those classifications that are defined here as 'unknown' function are the hypothetical, conserved hypothetical, unclassified and unknown function.

^bThe percentage of genes of known function comprises the remainder of the functional classes defined by TIGR. It should be noted that many of the genes in this class are categorized according to conserved motifs or predicted function (i.e. transporters, membrane proteins, regulatory functions and signal transduction) and might not be of actual known function. Therefore, the percentages listed are vast overestimates of the actual number of genes whose real roles are defined.

^cAll represents the cumulative percentage of each functional class for all 87 of the completed genomes contained within the CMR.