Bacterial/Fungal Persistence Gene Identification Project. Bacterial/Fungal Persistence Gene Identification Project

Bacterial/fungal persistence is the basis of at least two urgent unsolved problems in infectious disease: multidrug tolerant biofilm infections and latent tuberculosis. The goal of this study is to identify genes controlling formation of persisters, dormant cells that underlie these two unsolved problems, and to understand how these genes function in these biological processes. We propose to use genetics to identify mutant strains that exhibit increased rates of persister formation responsible for this persistence phenotype in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and the model organism Escherichia coli.