Dental Insurance Kids, Scientists sharpen view of gene transfer between pathogenic bacteria
The findings, by a team of researchers from the University of Oslo, the Forsyth Institute, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, appeared last week in the American Society for Microbiology’s new open-access journal, mSystems.
The researchers wanted to know precisely which metabolic pathways in the bacterial cell must be activated for the bacteria to become “competent,” or able to acquire genes from DNA in the environment. They focused on Streptococcus mutans, a strain involved in tooth decay.