Testing the specificity of the pBAD arabinose reporter

The project highlights Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Tm)'s ability to metabolize simple sugars released from dead commensal bacteria, by using the pBAD (araBAD promoter) system as a reporter of L-arabinose availability. Using bioinformatics and homology of conserved L-arabinose transporter genes shared in Escherichia coli K12 (E. coli) and S. Tm, we aimed to create a S. Tm mutant strain unable to obtain L-arabinose from it environment. During the projects course of time it was discovered that L-arabinose transporters are not a shared gene trait between E. coli and S. Tm, and that putative L-arabinose transporter orthologues may exists in the S. Tm genome