Small Things Considered blogger Merry Youle has authored a post
on the sequencing of Roseovarius nubinhibens. a bacterium that
recently joined the group of about a thousand bacteria whose
genomes have been sequenced. Researcher José González and
colleagues in Mary Ann Moran's lab at the University of Georgia,
Department of Marine Science, who sequenced Roseovarius
nubinhibens discovered that the bacterium's DNA chromosomes is
host to several prophages and various virus like particles
(elements that look like a virus but haven't been shown to
infect like a virus.) The researchers suspect that since other
sequenced members of the Rhodobacterales harbor related
prophages this type of prophage is common and may be active in
horizontal gene transfer (HGT) among these bacteria. Click
"source" to read more about this interesting research and the
questions raised over gene transfer agents and prophages.