“…Since dedicated metabolic measurements such as isotopolog profiling under infection condition have not been carried out in meningococci so far, most information on the relation between metabolism and virulence is thus indirect and stems mostly from “omic” technologies such as (comparative) genomics (Dunning Hotopp et al, 2006; Rusniok et al, 2009; Hao et al, 2011; Joseph et al, 2011), transcriptomics (Grifantini et al, 2002a,b; Dietrich et al, 2003; Joseph et al, 2010; Echenique-Rivera et al, 2011; Hedman et al, 2012; Hey et al, 2013), proteomics (Bernardini et al, 2007; Van Alen et al, 2010) and genome-wide signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) (Sun et al, 2000; Mendum et al, 2011) in conjunction with metabolic modeling (Baart et al, 2007). Therefore, after providing a very short overview of the metabolic capabilities of N. meningitidis derived in large part from genome-based approaches, we will discuss data also derived mostly from different “omic” approaches addressing the role of meningococcal core metabolism in the context of meningococcal colonization and invasion of host tissues.…”