Identification of Essential Genes in Staphylococcus aureus by Construction and Screening of Conditional Mutant Library

Antisense RNA technology has been used effectively to downregulate gene expression in a variety of bacterial systems. Regulated antisense RNA strategy provides an important approach to identify and characterize essential genes critical to bacterial growth in vitro and in vivo . This strategy allows selective genes to be turned on or off and to be expressed at certain levels. The availability of the Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus ) genome sequence makes it feasible to generate a gene-specific antisense RNA library. The combination of regulated antisense RNA technology and the gene-specific antisense RNA library allows for genome-wide analyses of functions of staphylococcal gene products for growth in culture and survival during infection.