Transcriptomic characterization of a virulence-deficient phosphatidylcholine-negative Agrobacterium tumefaciens mutant

To learn more about the global effects of phosphatidylcholine (PC)-deficiency in A. tumefaciens, we performed transcriptomic studies comparing the wild type and a PC-deficient DpmtA Dpcs mutant. We expanded the number of affected virulence genes and showed that the loss of PC was correlated with altered expression of multiple genes encoding membrane or membrane-associated proteins and proteins which fulfil their function at the membrane. The PC-deficient mutant analyzed in this study is further described in Sonja Klüsener, Stephanie Hacker, Yun-Long Tsai, Julia E. Bandow, Ronald Gust, Erh-Min Lai and Franz Narberhaus. 2010. Proteomic and transcriptomic characterization of a virulence-deficient phosphatidylcholine-negative Agrobacterium tumefaciens mutant. Total RNA was extracted from A. tumefaciens C58 wild-type and PC-deficient mutant cells grown under virulence-induced and non-induced conditions. The 4-plex NimbleGen Gene Expression Array for A. tumefaciens (Design ID 080630) represents 5344 genes and is based on NCBI reference sequences NC_003062, NC_003063, NC_003064 and NC_003065. Each gene is represented by 6 probes (45mer-60mer oligonucleotides), each in two copies on different locations on the array. Three biological replicates for each cultivation condition were analyzed for A. tumefaciens wild-type and PC-deficient mutant strains.