Acinetobacter baylyi: Explore metabolism

Like Pseudomonas species, Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1 is able to modify the diverse structures of many aromatic compounds to common intermediates that can feed into central pathways. About 20% of the genes of the strain ADP1 can be reasonably associated with catabolic functions. It is interesting to note that almost all of these genes are located in five major “islands of catabolic diversity”, within one quarter of the overall genome. The evolutionary basis for this extraordinary clustering is unknown but may be related to the propensity of DNA containing the genes to undergo frequent and extensive tandem duplication.