Detection of Essential Genes in Streptococcus pneumoniae Using Bioinformatics and Allelic Replacement Mutagenesis
Although the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance in major bacterial pathogens for the past decades poses a growing challenge to public health, discovery of novel antimicrobial agents from natural products or modification of existing antibiotics cannot circumvent the problem of antimicrobial resistance. The recent development of bacterial genomics and the availability of genome sequences allow the identification of potentially novel antimicrobial agents. The cellular targets of new antimicrobial agents must be essential for the growth, replication, or survival of the bacterium. Conserved genes among different bacterial genomes often turn out to be essential (1 , 2 ). Thus, the combination of comparative genomics and the gene knock-out procedure can provide effective ways to identify the essential genes of bacterial pathogens (3 ). Identification of essential genes in bacteria may be utilized for the development of new antimicrobial agents because common essential genes in diverse pathogens could constitute novel targets for broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents.
- The Use of Antigen Microarrays in Antibody Profiling
- Quantitative DNA Footprinting
- Automated Fluorescent DNA Sequencing on the ABI PRISM 377
- The Use of Bone Marrow-Chimeric Mice in Determining the MHC Restriction of Epitope-Specific Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes
- OmniBac: Universal Multigene Transfer Plasmids for Baculovirus Expression Vector Systems
- Generation and Functional Analysis of Zinc Finger Nucleases
- Sequencing Strategies for Parasite Genomes
- Forward Genetic Screens for Meiotic and Mitotic Recombination-Defective Mutants in Mice
- RNA Mapping Protocols: Northern Blot and Amplification of cDNA Ends
- Use of Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction for the Detection of Fetal Aneuploidies