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'Bioluminescent' Reporter Phage for the Detection of Category A Bacterial Pathogens
Published on: July 8, 2011
lacZ Reporter System as a Tool to Study Virulence Gene Regulation in Bacterial Pathogens
Gili Aviv1,2, Ohad Gal-Mor3,4
1The Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Abstract:
β-galactosidase assay has been established as one of the most widely used reporters and can be effectually exploited to study promoter activity of Salmonella and other pathogens under various conditions. This method includes a preliminary stage of fusing the target promoter to a promoter-less lacZ gene encoding for the enzyme β-galactosidase. Supplementation of the synthetic ONPG substrate results in the accumulation of a chromogenic product proportionally to the activity of the fused promoter. Here we demonstrate the usage of this reporter system to study the regulation of the Salmonella Type three secretion system effector gene sseL in S. Typhimurium [1].
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