Generating chromosome-located transcriptional fusions to fluorescent proteins for single-cell gene expression analysis in Pseudomonas syringae.

Abstract

The last decade has seen significant effort directed toward the role of phenotypic heterogeneity in bacterial adaptation. Phenotypic heterogeneity usually refers to phenotypic diversity that takes place through nongenetic means, independently of environmental induced variation. Recent findings are changing how microbiologists analyze bacterial behavior, with a shift from traditional assays averaging large populations to single-cell analysis focusing on bacterial individual behavior. Fluorescence-based methods are often used to analyze single-cell gene expression by flow cytometry, fluorescence microscopy and/or microfluidics. Moreover, fluorescence reporters can also be used to establish where and when are the genes of interest expressed. In this chapter, we use the model bacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae to illustrate a method to generate chromosome-located transcriptional gene fusions to fluorescent reporter genes, without affecting the function of the gene of interest.