%0 Journal Article %T Analysis of circular genome rearrangement by fusions, fissions and block-interchanges %A Chin Lung Lu %A Yen Lin Huang %A Tsui Ching Wang %A Hsien-Tai Chiu %J BMC Bioinformatics %D 2006 %I BioMed Central %R 10.1186/1471-2105-7-295 %X In this paper, we study the problem of genome rearrangement between two genomes of circular and multiple chromosomes by considering fusion, fission and block-interchange events altogether. By use of permutation groups in algebra, we propose an O MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBamrtHrhAL1wy0L2yHvtyaeHbnfgDOvwBHrxAJfwnaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb9q8qiLsFr0=vr0=vr0dc8meaabaqaciaacaGaaeqabaWaaeGaeaaakeaaimaacqWFoe=taaa@383D@ (n2) time algorithm to efficiently compute and obtain a minimum series of fusions, fissions and block-interchanges required to transform one circular multi-chromosomal genome into another, where n is the number of genes shared by the two studied genomes. In addition, we have implemented this algorithm as a web server, called FFBI, and have also applied it to analyzing by gene orders the whole genomes of three human Vibrio pathogens, each with multiple and circular chromosomes, to infer their evolutionary relationships. Consequently, our experimental results coincide well with our previous results obtained using the chromosome-by-chromosome comparisons by landmark orders between any two Vibrio chromosomal sequences as well as using the traditional comparative analysis of 16S rRNA sequences.FFBI is a useful tool for the bioinformatics analysis of circular and multiple genome rearrangement by fusions, fissions and block-interchanges.For the past two decades, genome rearrangements have been studied and can be modelled to learn more about the evolution of mitochondrial, chloroplast, viral, bacterial and mammalian genomes [1]. To evaluate the evolutionary distance between two related genomes in gene order, various rearrangement events acting on genes within or among chromosomes have been proposed, such as reversals (also known as inversions) [1-10], transpositions [11,12], block-interchanges [13-15], translocations [16,17], and fu %U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/7/295