ELECTROTRANSFORMATION OF HIGHLY DNA-RESTRICTIVE CORYNEBACTERIA WITH SYNTHETIC DNA

Highly DNA-restrictive Corynebacteria can be transformed with DNA made in vitro by PCR amplification of a sequence that contains the replica tion origin of pBL1, a plasmid common to many Corynebacteria. In all s trains examined, the transformation efficiencies of PCR-synthetized DN A equal or improve the performances of heterologous DNA extracted from wild-type and dam(-)-dcm(-) strains of Escherichia coil. The transfor mation efficiencies obtained with PCR-made DNA may be high enough to p ermit its general application to experiments of gene integration. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.