Re-sensitization of to Rifampicin Using CRISPR Interference Demonstrates Its Utility for the Study of Non-essential Drug Resistance Traits.

A greater understanding of the genes involved in antibiotic resistance in is necessary for the design of improved therapies. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat interference (CRISPRi) has been previously utilized in mycobacteria to identify novel drug targets by the demonstration of gene essentiality. The work presented here shows that it can also be usefully applied to the study of non-essential genes involved in antibiotic resistance.