Genes of periodontopathogens expressed during human disease.

Background: Since many bacterial genes are environmentally regulated, the screening for virulence-associated factors using classical genetic and molecular biology approaches can be biased under laboratory growth conditions of a given pathogen, because the required conditions for expression of many virulence factors may not occur during in vitro growth. Thus, technologies have been developed during the past several years to identify genes that are expressed during disease using animal models of human disease. However, animal models are not always truly representative of human disease, and with many pathogens, there is no appropriate animal model.