Control of Competence in Vibrio fischeri.

species, including the squid symbiont , become competent to take up DNA under specific conditions. For example, becomes competent when grown in the presence of chitin oligosaccharides or upon overproduction of the competence regulatory factor TfoX. While little is known about the regulatory pathway(s) that controls competence, this microbe encodes homologs of factors that control competence in the well-studied To further develop as a genetically tractable organism, we evaluated the roles of some of these competence homologs.