Revealing the genetic basis of natural bacterial phenotypic divergence

Divergent phenotypes for distantly related strains of bacteria, such as differing antibiotic resistances or organic solvent tolerances, are of keen interest both from an evolutionary perspective and for the engineering of novel microbial organisms and consortia in synthetic biology applications. A prerequisite for any practical application of this phenotypic diversity is knowledge of the genetic determinants for each trait of interest. Sequence divergence between strains is often so extensive as to make brute-force approaches to identifying the loci contributing to a given trait impractical. Here we describe a global linkage analysis approach, GLINT, for rapid discovery of the causal genetic variants underlying phenotypic divergence between distantly related strains of Escherichia coli. This general strategy will also be usable, with minor modifications, for revealing genotype-phenotype associations between naturally occurring strains of other bacterial species.