Transposon Insertion Mutagenesis for Archaeal Gene Discovery
: Kiljunen Saija, Pajunen Maria, Savilahti Harri
: Reeves Andrew
: 2017
: In Vitro Mutagenesis - Methods and Protocols
: Methods in Molecular Biology
: 1498
: 1498
: 309
: 320
: 12
: 978-1-4939-6470-3
: 978-1-4939-6472-7
: 1064-3745
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6472-7_20
Archaea constitute the third domain of life, but studies on their physiology and other features have lagged behind bacteria and eukarya, largely due to the challenging biology of archaea and concomitant difficulties in methods development. The use of genome-wide en masse insertion mutagenesis is one of the most efficient means to discover the genes behind various biological functions, and such a methodology is described in this chapter for a model archaeon Haloferax volcanii. The strategy successfully employs efficient in vitro transposition in combination with gene targeting in vivo via homologous recombination. The methodology is general and should be transferable to other archaeal species.