CHARACTERIZATION AND CLONING OF ODAP DEGRADING GENE FROM A SOIL MICROBE

The strain BYT-1, capable of utilizing ODAP/DAP as a sole source of ni trogen and carbon was identified as Pseudomonas stutzeri by various mi crobial and biochemical tests. Transformation experiments showed that the ODAP utilizing property is encoded by the plasmid. Restriction of plasmid DNA with Psd, followed by cloning of fragments and screening o f ODAP containing medium, led to the isolation of a clone with insert size of similar to 3.3 kb, which encoded ODAP metabolizing property. T he growth and ODAP/DAP utilization by this clone (T-8) was almost simi lar to that of the wild type strain.