%0 Journal Article %A Almpanis, Apostolos %A Swain, Martin %A Gatherer, Derek %A McEwan, Neil %T Correlation between bacterial G+C content, genome size and the G+C content of associated plasmids and bacteriophages %D 2018 %J Microbial Genomics, %V 4 %N 4 %@ 2057-5858 %C e000168 %R https://doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.000168 %K bacteria %K genome G+C content %K genome length %K plasmids %I Microbiology Society, %X Based on complete bacterial genome sequence data, we demonstrate a correlation between bacterial chromosome length and the G+C content of the genome, with longer genomes having higher G+C contents. The correlation value decreases at shorter genome sizes, where there is a wider spread of G+C values. However, although significant (P<0.001), the correlation value (Pearson R=0.58) suggests that other factors also have a significant influence. A similar pattern was seen for plasmids; longer plasmids had higher G+C values, although the large number of shorter plasmids had a wide spread of G+C values. There was also a significant (P<0.0001) correlation between the G+C content of plasmids and the G+C content of their bacterial host. Conversely, the G+C content of bacteriophages tended to reduce with larger genome sizes, and although there was a correlation between host genome G+C content and that of the bacteriophage, it was not as strong as that seen between plasmids and their hosts. %U https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/mgen/10.1099/mgen.0.000168