Provision of Mycobacterial Determinants of Survival and Fitness within the Bovine Host

AIMS: The overall goal of this proposal is to use to Transposon Directed Insertion Sequencing (TraDIS) methodology to determine M. bovis gene fitness and essentiality in disease relevant models of natural infection. This approach will result in (a) identification of the metabolic and physiological adaptations that M. bovis makes in the bovine host (b) identification of the selective pressures within bovine alveolar macrophages and the bovine host (c) a list of attenuating mutations that will allow us in future proj...