Identification of conditionally expressed genes in Streptococcus pyogenes using RNA fingerprinting

RNA fingerprinting using arbitrarily primed reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction was employed on isolated RNA from Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria in order to identify genes that were regulated in response to environmental changes. When S. pyogenes was cultured under glucose-rich growth conditions a number of transcriptionally up-regulated products were identified, cloned and sequenced. Using the Streptococcal Genome Sequencing Project database and similarity searches against the GenBank database the corresponding genes encoding enzyme IIB and IIC component of a putative phosphotransferase system were identified. Thus, we show that RNA fingerprinting could be a useful tool to identify unknown genes in S. pyogenes that are expressed under certain environmental conditions.