Table 1.

Characteristics of the six complete Methylobacterium genomes sequenced in this study

Organism	Key characteristic(s)	Genome analysis					GenBank accession no.	Reference
		Size (Mb)	% GC	No. of rrn operons	No. of tRNAs	No. of CDSa
M. extorquens strain PA1	Arabidopsis thaliana epiphyte	5.471	68.2	5	58	5,410	NC_010172	11
M. extorquens strain CM4	Chloromethane degrader	5.778	68.2	5	61	3,112	NC_011757	13
		0.380	66.3			388	NC_011758
		0.023	63.9			44	NC_011760
M. extorquens strain BJ001b	Populus deltoides x nigra DN34 endophyte	5.800	69.4	5	58	6,017	NC_010725	17
		0.025	64.9			30	NC_010727
		0.023	66.8			31	NC_010721
M. radiotolerans strain JCM 2831	Radioresistant strain	6.078	71.5	4	56	6,325	NC_010505	9
		0.586	69.6	2	1	650	NC_010510
		0.047	62.5			66	NC_010509
		0.043	63.2		1	75	NC_010514
		0.038	63.7		1	60	NC_010517
		0.036	62.0			64	NC_010518
		0.028	61.0		1	45	NC_010502
		0.022	61.1			38	NC_010504
		0.021	65.1			33	NC_010507
Methylobacterium sp. strain 4-46	Lotononis bainesi nodulating, photosynthetic	7.659	71.6	6	63	8,337	NC_010511	7
		0.058	65.1			108	NC_010373
		0.020	59.2			34	NC_010374
M. nodulans strain ORS 2060	Nonpigmented, nitrogen fixing, Crotalaria nodulating	7.772	68.9	7	71	8,879	NC_011894	10
		0.488	65.9		2	630	NC_011892
		0.458	65.7			609	NC_011887
		0.040	64.2			84	NC_011893
		0.038	61.6			66	NC_011895
		0.020	61.4			30	NC_011888
		0.013	60.5			16	NC_011889
		0.010	67.2			14	NC_011890

^aNumber of annotated protein-coding sequences in MicroScope (16).

^bThis strain, originally reported as M. populi strain BJ001 (17), was assigned to the species M. extorquens based on 16S rRNA gene identity (99.3%) and overall genome similarity with the four other sequenced M. extorquens strains (∼80% identity over 75% of its genome sequence) (also see reference 18).