Archive for the 'Neisseria' Category
“The Population Biology of Neisseria meningitidis: Implications for Meningococcal Disease, Epidemiology and Control.”
“Use of Variable-Number Tandem Repeats To Examine Genetic Diversity of Neisseria meningitidis”
This week we will be looking at association mapping in bacteria, especially meningococcus. The Falush paper is a short review article that focuses on the Bille 2005 paper. The Bille paper investigates a repeat element that is traced back to an integrated bacteriophage.
falush_2006_trends-in-microbiology
Questions to help you
What is a bacteriophage? Inverted repeat element?
How do the authors test to see if the sequence of interest is really derived from a bacteriophage?
Swartley et al describe capsule switching in Neisseria meningitidis.
pnas-1997-jan941-271-6-all-figures
Major questions to answer
- What is capsule switching?
- What is the mechanism behind it?
- How did the authors confirm capsule switching had occurred?
- Why is it advantageous for Neisseria meningitidis to undergo capsule switching?
- Why is the capsule itself advantageous?
Our paper for the next meeting is below, and I’ll have some basic questions to help guide you by next week.