Sequencing Efforts Miss Dna Crucial to Bacteria's Disease Causing Power

Genomic sequencing is supposed to reveal the entire genetic makeup of an organism. For infectious disease specialists, the technology can be used to analyze a disease-causing bacterium to determine how much harm it is capable of causing and whether or not it will be resistant to antibiotics. But new research at Rockefeller University suggests that current sequencing protocols overlook crucial bits of information: isolated pieces of DNA floating outside the bacterial chromosome, the core of a cell's genetic material.

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