The genome of the B38 strain consists of a circular chromosome containing 1,576,758 base pairs (bp) and an average GC content of 39.2% (Figure 3). It is the smallest H. pylori genome sequenced to date (Table 1). The B38 genome sequence was first automatically and then manually annotated using the MaGe system [28]http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/agc/mage and was then compared with the other sequenced H. pylori genomes. It contains 1,528 CDSs with a coding density (85.0%) similar to that found in the other Helicobacter sequenced strains. Among the 1528 CDSs, 1393 were predicted to be protein-coding genes (complete CDSs) with an average length of 971 bp; 135 correspond to partial CDSs, of which 133 are pseudogenes (i.e. 133 fragments representing 62 genes) and two are remnant genes (corresponding to truncated genes for which we cannot find the missing sections in close proximity) (Table 1).