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INTRODUCTION In a previous monograph (38), we gave as one reason for interest in the genetics of Streptomyces coelicolor a desire to know the features that char-acterize the genomes of prokaryotes. It is an un-fortuinate fact that many interesting groups of prokaryotes remain almost or completely un-known from a genetic standpoint: spirochetes, myxobacteria, blue-green algae, to name only three. Therefore, in the absence of information on the genetics of the majority of prokaryote groups, the problem can be provisionally ex-pressed in the following question: which peculiarities of thestructure and behavior of the Escherichia coli chromosome, the best known prokaryote genome, are shared by that of S. coelicolor? Since these two microbes are near the opposite extremes of morphological complexity to be found among prokaryotes, they are likely to be phylogenetically separated to a more than average degree …