The ultimate goal of my current focus is to take advantage of the recently described in vitro co-culture model of Treponema pallidum and link its use to high throughput genomic approaches to provide unique insights into the gene expression profiles of this pathogen. We aim to generate novel fundamental data which can lead to identification of functional pathways and prediction of the function for hypothetical genes, give light to the patterns of selection we see in genomic data and a better understanding of the key growth dependencies that could inform future axenic cultivation of Treponema pallidum. With a better understanding of basic biology we hope to introduce a more mechanistic understanding to surveillance and genomic epidemiology of syphilis.