Project information
Postgenomic studies on Treponema pallidum, the syphilis spirochete

Investor logo
Project Identification
GA310/04/0021
Project Period
1/2004 - 12/2006
Investor / Pogramme / Project type
Czech Science Foundation
MU Faculty or unit
Faculty of Medicine
Keywords
treponema pallidum, functional genomics, DNA microarray

The genome sequence of Treponema has been completed. Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum is the causative agent of syphilis and is unculturable under in vitro conditions. This fact severly limits the use of standard genetic approaches to study this organism. We constructed the larga insert library of T. pallidum DNA in E. coli harborin 98,7 % of all T. pallidum genes on 19 individual clones. We constructed also DNA microarrays containing PCR products of all 1039 predicted T. pallidum ORFs. i) Methods of functional genomics will be used for gene function identifications. ii) Closely related T. paraluicuniculi is the etiologic agent of veneral spirochetosis of rabbits and is not infectious to humans. Genomic comparisons of both treponemes can provide evidence of genetic diversity that can be related to the different pathogenicity of these closely related bacteria. DNA microarray-based technology allows comparisons between these organism on both DNA (genome structure) and mRNA (expression profiling) levels. iii) The 19 canonical clones will be used to perform experiments on T. pallidum gene regulation within E. coli. Predicted T. pallidum regulators will be cloned on BAC-compatible expression of the cosmid-encoded T. pallidum genes in E.coli induced by the vector-encoded T. pallidum regulators will be examined. Similar regulation of a set of genes will be used for predictions of gene functions.

Publications

Total number of publications: 45


Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.

More info