Ralstonia solanacearum is a scientifically/economically important plant pathogenic bacterium. The plant disease caused by R. solanacearum causes huge economic losses, and efficient control measures for the disease remain limited. To gain a better system-level understanding of R. solanacearum, we generated a near-saturated transposon insertion library of R. solanacearum GMI1000 with approximately 240,000 individual insertion mutants. Transposon sequencing (Tn-seq) allowed the mapping of 70.44%–80.96% of all potential insertion sites of the mariner C9 transposase in the genome of R. solanacearum and the identification of 465 genes essential for the growth of R. solanacearum in rich medium. Functional and comparative analyses of essential genes revealed that many basic physiological and biochemical processes such as transcription differ between R. solanacearum and other bacteria. A comparative analysis of essential genes also suggested that 34 genes might be essential only for Ralstonia group bacteria, whereas another 16 essential genes are unique to Ralstonia, providing high-priority candidate targets for developing R. solanacearum-specific drugs.

青枯雷尔氏菌是科学/经济上重要的植物致病细菌。由青枯菌引起的植物病害造成巨大的经济损失，并且对该病的有效控制措施仍然有限。为了更好地了解茄青枯菌，我们生成了茄青枯菌GMI1000的近饱和转座子插入文库，具有约240,000个单独的插入突变体。转座子序列（TN-SEQ）允许的70.44％的基因组中的水手转座C9的所有潜在的插入位点的映射-80.96％青枯和识别的465个基因用于生长所必需青枯在丰富的媒体中。基本基因的功能和比较分析显示，茄形红杆菌和其他细菌之间的许多基本生理和生化过程（例如转录）不同。对必需基因的比较分析还表明，34个基因可能仅对Ralstonia群细菌是必需的，而另外16个必需基因是Ralstonia独有的，为开发茄科红斑球菌特异药物提供了高度优先的候选靶标。