Transcriptional effects of overexpression of the mtrCDE operon in Neisseria gonorrhoeae due to a cis-acting point mutation

A whole transcriptome comparison of N. gonorrhoeae strain FA19, which bears a wild-type mtr locus, and FA19mtr120, which contains a C-to-T transition mutation 120 base pairs upstream of the mtrC start codon that generates a second promoter for mtrCDE transcription, was performed to determine the effects of high-level expression of the mtrCDE efflux pump operon on global transcription within the gonococcus. Examination of the transcriptomes of N. gonorrhoeae wild-type strain FA19 and the isogenic FA19mtr120 mutant to determine the effect of overexpression of mtrCDE on gonococcal cells grown under laboratory conditions. Illumina HiSeq-2000 next generation sequencing was used to sequence the transcriptomes of each strain. Reads were mapped against the N. gonorrhoeae FA1090 genome (NCBI accession number NC_002946) because at the time this experiment was run the FA19 genome was incomplete.