Hunting WMDs in pathogen genomes

Surridge, Christopher

doi:10.1038/nrmicro2035

Research Highlight
Published: 03 November 2008

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Hunting WMDs in pathogen genomes

Christopher Surridge

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 6, page 875 (2008)Cite this article

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First the genome of the pathogen is split into segments of around 40,000 bp and cloned into Escherichia coli . These modified strains can then be screened for a gain of toxicity. Waterfield and colleagues applied this technique to the genome of Photorhabdus asymbiotica, a member of the Enterobacteriaceae that infects insects and humans. The complex life cycle of P. asymbiotica includes a phase in which the bacterium lives in the gut of Heterorhabditis nematodes, for which the pathogen must produce immune inhibitors, toxins and antimicrobials. The authors therefore screened E. coli transformed with the P. asymbiotica library against not only a mouse macrophage cell line but also the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans , the protozoan Acanthamoeba polyphaga and two caterpillars, the tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta) and greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella).

“... rapid virulence annotation ... uses convenient experimental organisms as surrogates for the mammalian immune system.”

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

Waterfield, N. R. et al. Rapid Virulence Annotation (RVA): identification of virulence factors using a bacterial genome library and multiple invertebrate hosts. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 15967–15972 (2008)
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