Competence Beyond Genes: Filling in the Details of the Pneumococcal Competence Transcriptome by a Systems Approach.

DNA uptake by natural competence is a central process underlying the genetic plasticity, biology, and virulence of the human respiratory opportunistic pathogen, Streptococcus pneumoniae. A study in this issue (Slager et al , J Bacteriol doi: 10.1128/JB.00780-18) combines deep-genome annotation and high-resolution transcriptome analyses to considerably extend the previous model of temporal regulation of competence at the operon and component-gene levels. This extended study also provides a playbook for updating, refining, and extending genomic data sets and making them publicly available.