Genome wide mapping of gene essentiality and fitness in Pseudomonas chlororaphis ATCC 9446 using transposon mutagenesis
This study aims to define the genome-wide genetic requirements of Pseudomonas chlororaphis subsp. chlororaphis ATCC 9446 by mapping transposon insertion mutants and quantifying gene essentiality and fitness contributions across distinct growth conditions. P. chlororaphis is a non-pathogenic rhizosphere bacterium with relevance as a biocontrol agent and as a promising chassis for the production of secondary metabolites and recombinant products. By generating randomly barcoded TnSeq data in rich and minimal media, this project seeks to identify essential genes, condition-dependent fitness determinants, and highly expressed non-essential functions that may represent targets for strain optimization. The resulting dataset will expand functional annotation in a non-model bacterium, improve understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships in environmentally and biotechnologically relevant conditions, and provide a resource for future metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications.