Identification of metabolic pathways essential for fitness of Salmonella Typhimurium in vivo.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial infections remain a threat to human and animal health worldwide, and there is an urgent need to find novel targets for intervention. In the current study we used a computer model of the metabolic network of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and identified pairs of reactions (cut sets) predicted to be required for growth in vivo. We termed such cut sets synthetic auxotrophic pairs. We tested whether these would reveal possible combined targets for new antibiotics by analyzing the performance of selected single and double mutants in systemic mouse infections. One hundred and two cut sets were identified. Sixty-three of these included only pathways encoded by fully annotated genes, and from this sub-set we selected five cut sets involved in amino acid or polyamine biosynthesis

SUBMITTER: Jelsbak L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4081726 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature