The Molecular Version of Koch's Postulates

Hello

For this exercise I picked H. influenza's penicillin binding protein 7 (pbp7) which causes bacteremia upon intraperitoneal injection of the organism into an infant rat model.
Our molecular Koch's postulates would then look as follows:
1.pbp7 should be associated with pathogenic H. influenza and be absent from nonpathogenic strains.
2.Mutation of the pbp7 should lead to a measurable loss in virulence in comparison to the unmutated H. influenza when introduced into the infant rat model.
3.Reintroducing a functional copy of pbp7 into the mutant strain should restore virulence in the infant rat model.

Extra information about Molecular Koch's postulates:
Falkow S (1988). "Molecular Koch's postulates applied to microbial pathogenicity." Rev Infect Dis 10(suppl 2):S274-S276.

Cheers,

Will Spencer

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