Arcady Mushegian, “Foundations of Comparative Genomics”, 2007 is a science book on genomics. It contains reference to an article: A. Mushegian, and E. Koonin, “A minimal gene set for cellular life derived by comparison of complete bacterial genomes”, Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 93, year 1996, page 10,268-10,273.
Hans Christian Gram in 1884 discovered that “crystal violet” could be used to classify the bacterial kingdom into two broad groupings.
Mushegian and Koonin compared the genomes of a gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria and concluded the minimal number of protein genes is 256.
A tabulation of the proteins is shown BELOW with fractions of “Cellular Physiology“. Of the “top two percents” 36.95% “Translation”, and 13.22% “Energy” were 94 and 34 proteins, respectively. The “least two percents” were 1.94% “Inorganic-Ion Uptake” & “Secretion, Receptor” 5 and 5 proteins, respectively.
The two top “cell function” Translation & Energy are associated with “kwashiorkor” (protein-starvation) and caloric-starvation.
Again, Mushegian and Koonin determined that the minimal number of proteins for cellular life is 256 proteins for the bacterial kingdom.
