English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Background  Gene essentiality - whether or not a gene is necessary for cell growth - is a fundamental component of gene function. It is not well established how quickly gene essentiality can change, as few studies have compared empirical measures of essentiality between closely related organisms.    Results  Here we present the results of a Tn-seq experiment designed to detect essential protein coding genes in the bacterial pathogen  Shigella flexneri  2a 2457T on a genome-wide scale. Superficial analysis of this data suggested that 481 protein-coding genes in this  Shigella  strain are critical for robust cellular growth on rich media. Comparison of this set of genes with a gold-standard data set of essential genes in the closely related  Escherichia coli  K12 BW25113 revealed that an excessive number of genes appeared essential in  Shigella  but non-essential in  E. coli.  Importantly, and in converse to this comparison, we found no genes that were essential in  E. coli  and non-essential in  Shigella , implying that many genes were artefactually inferred as essential in  Shigella.  Controlling for such artefacts resulted in a much smaller set of discrepant genes. Among these, we identified three sets of functionally related genes, two of which have previously been implicated as critical for  Shigella  growth, but which are dispensable for  E. coli  growth.    Conclusions  The data presented here highlight the small number of protein coding genes for which we have strong evidence that their essentiality status differs between the closely related bacterial taxa  E. coli  and  Shigella.  A set of genes involved in acetate utilization provides a canonical example. These results leave open the possibility of developing strain-specific antibiotic treatments targeting such differentially essential genes, but suggest that such opportunities may be rare in closely related bacteria.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12866-016-0818-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

bmc microbiology

Combining Shigella Tn-seq data with gold-standard E. coli gene deletion data suggests rare transitions between essential and non-essential gene functionality