Reference no: EM133441884

Assignment:

Before you read the article:

1. What is so important about iron for bacteria and how do they collect it into their cells?
2. In the molecular and genetic context, what is an ORF?
3. What can be learned from using BLAST?

While reading the article consider:

1. Why has it been a challenge to understand the underlying mechanisms of microbiomes?
2. How does horizontal gene transfer (HGT) have a role in bacteria evolution?
3. Why does cheese rind make a good model system?
4. Why does it matter that lactic acid bacteria may have antibiotic resistant genes?
5. What do the authors predict about the biofilm and the cheese rind?
6. Which group of bacteria had greater frequency of HGT? (See Figure 1a)
7. What was the general function of most of the genes subject to HGT? (See Figure 1c)
8. What is the role of RUSTI operon?

After you read think about how you would answer:

1. How can the conclusions about biofilms and microbial communities in cheese translate to other environments (or natural systems)?
2. Could there be a benefit of isolating the RUSTI operon and engineering it to be in other bacteria?
3. What can we use from these conclusions to understand antibiotic resistance?