Construction of a complete set of Neisseria meningitidis defined mutants - the NeMeSys collection - and its use for the phenotypic profiling of the genome of an important human pathogen [article]

Alastair Muir, Ishwori Gurung, Ana Cehovin, Adelme Bazin, David Vallenet, Vladimir Pelicic
2020 bioRxiv   pre-print
One of the most important challenges in biology is to determine the function of millions of genes of unknown function. Even in model bacterial species, there is a sizeable proportion of such genes, which has important theoretical and practical consequences. Here, we constructed a complete collection of defined mutants - named NeMeSys - in the important human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis, consisting of individual mutants in 1,584 non-essential genes. This effort identified 391 essential
more » ... ococcal genes - highly conserved in other bacteria - leading to a full panorama of the minimal genome in this species, associated with just four underlying basic biological functions: 1) expression of genome information, 2) preservation of genome information, 3) cell membrane structure/function, and 4) cytosolic metabolism. Subsequently, we illustrated the utility of the NeMeSys collection for determining gene function by identifying 1) a novel and conserved family of histidinol-phosphatase, 2) all genes, including three new ones, involved in the biology of type IV pili, a widespread virulence factor, and 3) several conditionally essential genes found in regions of genome plasticity, likely to encode antitoxins and/or immunity proteins. These findings have widespread implications in bacteria. The NeMeSys collection is an invaluable resource paving the way for a global phenotypic landscape in a major human bacterial pathogen.
doi:10.1101/2020.08.12.247981 fatcat:oapiryjhkngmhakm7jpoj442rq