We found that regardless of the technology used, both of these datasets were characterized consistently. We expect the web server models to work equally well with assembled sequence data from other technologies with similar sequencing error rates, such as the SOLiD platform. It should be noted that the performance of PhyloPythiaS on sequence fragments with high error rates is still unexplored. Furthermore, we advise that short reads should be assembled into longer contigs before submitting them to the PhyloPythiaS web server. Although the server produces assignments for short sequences, like with other methods, these assignments are less accurate than those for longer sequences and often to higher ranking taxa only. For scientists without access to large computing resources or Vismodegib Hedgehog inhibitor familiarity with Unix/Linux, our server provides a novel, easily accessible resource for taxonomic assignment of metagenome sequence fragments. Tetrazolium salts have been widely used in assays that measure cell proliferation. Some of them form water-soluble formazans after reduction, while others form insoluble granules. These dyes also have applications in microbiology, e.g., 5-cyano-2,3-ditolyl tetrazolium chloride was used to enumerate metabolically active bacteria in environmental samples as well as in stationary phase cultures. The rationale behind these applications is that in a cell culture or living tissue, dye reduction is proportional to cell metabolic activity. However, not all living cells in a culture show the reduction activity, and reduction is significantly influenced by factors such as the type of dye, the pH of the medium, and cell line in use. Understanding the reduction mechanism is therefore critical for developing the next generation of dyes as well as for evaluating current results. As vital dyes, tetrazolium salts are known to accept hydrogen from the respiratory oxidation system, and is often assumed to be reduced intracellularly. However, the use of cellfree systems to identify reduction sites has been only partially successful in eukaryotic systems. Accumulating evidence indicates that in vivo reduction pathways are very different from those in in vitro systems, e.g. inhibitors of the succinate:ubiquinone oxidoreductase pathway can completely block CTC reduction in membrane vesicles but have no effect on intact Escherichia coli cells. 2,3,5- triphenyl tetrazolium chloride was synthesized a century ago and is the prototype of all tetrazolium dyes. Lederberg applied it to E. coli in 1948, and observed large granules at one of the two cell poles. Berg and Turner used these granules as the pole marker to study cell orientation in swimming bacteria. One of the two bacterial cell poles is derived from the septum, while the other is inherited from the parental generation. We have shown previously that the granules were often located at the old pole. Spontaneous localization of selfaggregating proteins in bacteria has been described for membrane receptors, cytoplasmic proteins.