ABSTRACT
Corynebacteria are of tremendous importance both to human health and for industrial purposes. Corynebacterium glutamicum (Cgl) and C. efficiens (Cef), for example,
are two closely related producers of amino acids for commercial purposes [8,15]. Whereas Cef can grow above 40ºC, Cgl cannot, possibly because of differences in the amino acid compositions of the proteins present in the two organisms [15]. Both organisms have genome sizes of about 3.2 Mbp (3.31 for Cgl, 3.15 for Cef), and both genomes have been fully sequenced [9,15,22]. Specific transport systems responsible for the uptake and export of various metabolites related to amino acid metabolism have been better characterized in C. glutamicum than in any other bacterium [3,10,13]. However, comprehensive genome analyses of transporters in these bacteria have not previously been reported. In this chapter, we describe comparative studies of the transporters encoded within the genomes of Cgl and Cef.
