Probing the microenvironment of intracellular bacterial pathogens

The identification of bacterial genes regulated in response to the intracellular environment is crucial to the understanding of host-pathogen interactions. Several techniques have been developed to identify and characterize bacterial genes that are induced during the intracellular infection and, potentially, may play a role in pathogenesis. This review discusses the strategies that have been utilized to examine differential gene expression by bacterial pathogens during the intracellular infection. Furthermore, a number of the differentially expressed genes are described.