Pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxins pose a serious threat to human and environmental health. Natural attenuation of these compounds by microorganisms provides one promising avenue for their removal from contaminated areas. Over the past 2 decades, studies of the bacterium Sphingomonas wittichii RW1 have provided a wealth of knowledge about how bacteria metabolize chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons. Here we describe the finished genome sequence of S. wittichii RW1 and major findings from its annotation.
