About the Authors

Howard Ochman

howard.ochman@yale.edu

Current address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, West Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America

Michael Worobey

Affiliation Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America

Chih-Horng Kuo

Affiliations Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Jean-Bosco N. Ndjango

Affiliation Faculties of Sciences, University of Kisangani, Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Martine Peeters

Affiliation Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), University of Montpellier 1, Montpellier, France

Beatrice H. Hahn

Affiliations Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama United States of America, Department of Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama United States of America

Philip Hugenholtz

Current address: Australian Centre for Ecogenomics, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Affiliation Microbial Ecology Program, DOE Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

The author(s) have made the following declarations about their contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: HO MW PH. Performed the experiments: HO PH. Analyzed the data: HO MW CHK PH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MW CHK JBNN MP BHH. Wrote the paper: HO MW CHK BHH PH.