We now have several Geobacter genome alignments up on the UCSC genome browser website. One particular Geobacter, G. uraniumreducens has a putative arsenate respiratory reductase gene cluster, which I added a custom track for in the browser (see link). We will be adding Geobacter lovleyi shortly. This should be a great resource for those interested in the genomics of Geobacter and metal reducers in general.

Geobacter genome browser

Geobacter uraniumreducens with custom arr track

[UPDATE 5/31/2008] Gura has a stop codon in the middle of arrB, the iron sulfur subunit gene. I marked this as a custom track in the genome browser. It is interesting because Glov has a fully coded arrB gene, with no stops. Based on this data, I predict that Glov will respire arsenate and that G. uraniireducens (formerly G. uraniumreducens) will not.

Here is the G. lovleyi browser with the custom arr track.