Identification of Genes Required for Swarming Motility in Bacillus subtilis Using Transposon Mutagenesis and High-Throughput Sequencing (TnSeq)

Abstract

In TnSeq, transposons are randomly inserted throughout the chromosome at a population level, but insertions that disrupt genes of essential function cause strains that carry them to fall out of the population and appear underrepresented at the sequence level. Here, we apply TnSeq to the nonessential phenotype of motility in B. subtilis and spatially select for cells proficient in swarming.