Genetic Transformation of a Ocular Isolate With the Functional Tryptophan Synthase Operon Confers an Indole-Rescuable Phenotype.

is the leading cause of preventable blindness and the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection. Different strains are associated with ocular or urogenital infections, and a proposed mechanism that may explain this tissue tropism is the active tryptophan biosynthesis pathway encoded by the genomic operon in urogenital strains. Here we describe genetic complementation studies that are essential to confirm the role of tryptophan synthase in the context of an ocular genomic background.