In the early 1990s, one of us was involved in one of thefirst projects to sequence a bacterial genome, the meager1.1 Mb chromosome of Treponema pallidum, the causa-tive agent of syphilis. Completing the project ultimatelytook about seven years (until published in 1998 [1]),over US$1.8 million in National Institutes of Healthgrants (R01AI031068 and R01AI040390) [2], and re-quired pooling forces with The Institute for GenomicResearch. Recently, that original T. pallidum strain wasre-sequenced to get a 'perfect' sequence, a process thattook a few days and cost only hundreds of dollars [3].The original sequencing was performed with thedideoxy-chain termination technique using slab gel elec-trophoresis instruments. Newly developed software wasused for genome assembly and data management andanalysis. The latter re-sequencing was performed withnext-generation sequencing (NGS) technology and ma-ture software tools. Such is the enormous progress inmicrobial genome sequencing in the last 20 years.
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