The genome sequence of a Sphingobium strain capable of tolerating high concentrations of Ni ions, and exhibiting natural kanamycin resistance, is presented. The presence of a transposon derived kanamycin resistance gene and several genes for efflux-mediated metal resistance may explain the observed characteristics of the new Sphingobium isolate.

The present invention relates to a shuttle system with which nucleic acids of interest may be imported into a mitochondrion. This system is based on the use of a fusion protein between a mitochondrial targeting sequence and a protein binding a nucleic acid of interest. This shuttle system is for example useful in agronomics, in the field of gene therapy, and within the scope of research products aiming at characterizing the function of mitochondrial genes.