Comparative Approach to Analysis of Gene Essentiality

Abstract

A collection of chapters assembled in this volume provides an illustration of remarkable technological progress in genome-scale essentiality analysis in a variety of microbial species. In accord with other genomic techniques, one may anticipate that the volume of essentiality data will continue to grow at an accelerated pace as the technology becomes more robust and affordable. Despite substantial biological constraints associated with expansion to every new organism, the growing spectrum of techniques (illustrated in Part I of this book) has already allowed researchers to overcome the encountered problems for many diverse microbes. Moreover, the respective methods, once established in a given species, may be seamlessly expanded toward acquisition of massive data in a variety of experimental conditions. The rapid accumulation of genome-scale essentiality data, even if not matching the volume of sequencing or expression data, would soon create similar bioinformatics challenges. Indeed, such challenges are already apparent despite a relatively modest volume of currently available data.