Access

Research Highlights

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 875 (1 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/nrmicro2035

Techniques: Hunting WMDs in pathogen genomes

Christopher Surridge

Bioinformatics algorithms are becoming increasingly successful for the functional annotation of genomes, but they cannot replace experimental approaches when searching for the highly specialized genes responsible for virulence in pathogens. Such approaches usually involve screening pathogens containing loss-of-function mutations, which can be both time-consuming and fraught with ethical complications.