Tn-phyto: essential genomes of nine bacterial phytopathogens

International audienceStudies on phytopathogenic bacteria have so far been performed on laboratory strains. The aim of our project is to identify virulence factors of phytopathogenic bacteria isolated from the environment as well as those allowing their survival in water. For this purpose, we use Tn-seq, an innovative mutagenesis technique coupled with high throughput sequencing chosen to rapidly identify, on a large panel of strains, genes necessary for growth in a given condition, the plant or water. This study is carried out on strains of Dickeya, Pectobacterium and Pseudomonas syringae, all of which are capable of growing on a wide range of hosts as well as in water, thus allowing the most complete identification of genes of interest. Another axis of this ANR is the development of a complete bioinformatics pipeline, allowing to process data obtained under multiple conditions and for strains of different species. The results obtained will help us to predict the virulence of strains and/or to develop antibacterial strategies. Overall, this project will pave the way for studies of other environmental pathogens by proposing an original conceptual and technological framework that is extremely promisin