I am part of a project elucidating some structures that are required for bacterial transformation. We have the opportunity to screen inhibitors of the system to stop it from functioning. I am not a microbiologist and have never worked with transformation, and this research process would be time and resource intensive. I am weighing up the pros and cons, however am struggling with how the inhibitors could be practically applied.

Required:

Question 1: How useful would stopping transformation be? My thoughts so far boil down to:

Question 2: Could it enhance controls by allowing two separate strains to grow on the same plate without any genetic conference?

Question 3: Could it be applied to stop contamination of genetic information from otherwise insignificant contaminants?

Question 4: Are there any other problems that transformation is causing in laboratory experiments?

Plese all the answers carefully.