Basic bioinformatics analysis has been performed on the draft macronucleus genome and tran scriptome of the Euplotes crassus ciliate. More than a quarter of E. crassus genes contain several exons. Among introns, a large fraction of tiny introns was revealed with the length of 20-30 nucleotides. We deter mined 63 cases of alternative splicing and found 14 introns with nonstandard splicing sites. About 2000 of hypothesized genes in E. crassus have no homologues with other ciliates but in the majority of them a consid erable similarity is observed with bacterial genes that can be due to contamination while ciliate sample prep aration. Comparison of the genomes of E. crassus and other ciliates evidences the expansion of the same gene families, which are responsible for the vitality of free living heterotrophic organisms.
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