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High-throughput CRISPRi phenotyping identifies new essential genes in Streptococcus pneumoniae.

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TLDR
The CRISPRi library provides a valuable tool for characterization of pneumococcal genes and pathways and revealed several promising antibiotic targets.
Abstract
Genome-wide screens have discovered a large set of essential genes in the opportunistic human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae However, the functions of many essential genes are still unknown, hampering vaccine development and drug discovery. Based on results from transposon sequencing (Tn-seq), we refined the list of essential genes in S. pneumoniae serotype 2 strain D39. Next, we created a knockdown library targeting 348 potentially essential genes by CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) and show a growth phenotype for 254 of them (73%). Using high-content microscopy screening, we searched for essential genes of unknown function with clear phenotypes in cell morphology upon CRISPRi-based depletion. We show that SPD_1416 and SPD_1417 (renamed to MurT and GatD, respectively) are essential for peptidoglycan synthesis, and that SPD_1198 and SPD_1197 (renamed to TarP and TarQ, respectively) are responsible for the polymerization of teichoic acid (TA) precursors. This knowledge enabled us to reconstruct the unique pneumococcal TA biosynthetic pathway. CRISPRi was also employed to unravel the role of the essential Clp-proteolytic system in regulation of competence development, and we show that ClpX is the essential ATPase responsible for ClpP-dependent repression of competence. The CRISPRi library provides a valuable tool for characterization of pneumococcal genes and pathways and revealed several promising antibiotic targets.

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Journal ArticleDOI

A decade of advances in transposon-insertion sequencing

TL;DR: The recent applications of TIS to answer overarching biological questions are discussed and emerging and multidisciplinary methods that build on TIS are explored, with an eye towards future applications.
Journal ArticleDOI

A CRISPRi screen in E. coli reveals sequence-specific toxicity of dCas9

TL;DR: It is revealed that guide RNAs sharing specific 5-nucleotide seed sequences can produce strong fitness defects or even kill E. coli regardless of the other 15 nucleotides of guide sequence, and design rules to minimize off-target effects are provided.
Journal ArticleDOI

Genome-wide CRISPR-dCas9 screens in E. coli identify essential genes and phage host factors.

TL;DR: This study demonstrates the usefulness and convenience of pooled genome-wide CRISPR-dCas9 screens in bacteria and paves the way for their broader use as a powerful tool in bacterial genomics.
Journal ArticleDOI

Functional genomics of the rapidly replicating bacterium Vibrio natriegens by CRISPRi.

TL;DR: A genome-wide CRISPR interference screen of the fast-growing Vibrio natriegens bacterium elucidates the make-up of minimal genomes and the metabolic pathways enabling rapid bacterial replication.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

CRISPR Interference Can Prevent Natural Transformation and Virulence Acquisition during In Vivo Bacterial Infection

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that CRISPR interference can prevent the emergence of virulence in vivo and that strong selective pressure for virulence or antibiotic resistance can lead toCRISPR loss in bacterial pathogens.
Journal ArticleDOI

Community-acquired pneumonia.

TL;DR: Empirical selection of antibiotic treatment is the cornerstone of management of patients with pneumonia, and management should include early shifts to oral antibiotics, stewardship according to the microbiological results, and short-duration antibiotic treatment that accounts for the clinical stability criteria.
Journal ArticleDOI

How to get (a)round: mechanisms controlling growth and division of coccoid bacteria

TL;DR: Recent progress that has advanced knowledge of the complex mechanisms for chromosome segregation and cell division in bacteria which have, deceptively, the simplest possible shape: the cocci are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI

The genetic transformation machinery: composition, localization, and mechanism.

TL;DR: A series of observations made in Bacillus subtilis and Streptococcus pneumoniae led to the recent emergence of a picture of a unique, highly integrated machine localized at the cell poles, which is proposed to name the transformasome.
Journal ArticleDOI

Antibiotic-induced replication stress triggers bacterial competence by increasing gene dosage near the origin

TL;DR: The data suggest that evolution has conserved the oriC-proximal location of important genes in bacteria to allow for a robust response to replication stress without the need for complex gene-regulatory pathways.
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