PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sharanjeet Atwal
AU  - Suparat Giengkam
AU  - Yanin Jaiyen
AU  - Heather Feaga
AU  - Jonathan Dworkin
AU  - Jeanne Salje
TI  - Clickable methionine as a universal probe for labelling intracellular bacteria
AID  - 10.1101/784371
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 784371
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/26/784371.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/26/784371.full
AB  - Despite their clinical and biological importance, the cell biology of obligate intracellular bacteria is less well understood than that of many free-living model organisms. One reason for this is that they are mostly genetically intractable. As a consequence, it is not possible to engineer strains expressing fluorescent proteins and therefore fluorescence light microscopy – a key tool in host-pathogen cell biology studies – is difficult. Strain diversity limits the universality of antibody-based immunofluorescence approaches. Here, we have developed a universal labelling protocol for intracellular bacteria based on a clickable methionine analog. Whilst we have applied this to obligate intracellular bacteria, we expect it to be useful for labelling free living bacteria as well as other intracellular pathogens.