The Mycobacterium tuberculosis β-oxidation genes echA5 and fadB3 are dispensable for growth in vitro and in vivo.

For example, the transposon library may not be completely saturated, the transposon may not be able to insert itself at a particular genomic region due to secondary structure and the genetic location of the gene may be significant (if a gene is situated in an operon upstream of essential genes then this gene will not be disrupted although may not itself be essential). fadB3 is in an operon with putative essential genes upstream but only non-essential genes downstream. echA5 is the last gene of an operon with a putative essential gene upstream, so it is unclear as to why a transposon mutant was not obtained for these genes.

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