Construction and use of a broad-host-range plasmid expressing the lamB gene for utilization of bacteriophage lambda vectors in the marine bacterium Vibrio harveyi

The remarkable success of Escherichia coli as a model organism in molecular genetics was dependent, among other things, on its susceptibility to genet ic manipulation. Many versatile and sophisticated genetic tools for molecul ar biology studies are derived from bacteriophage lambda. However, this bac teriophage is specific for E. coli, and thus lambda -based techniques have been restricted to this bacterium. Plasmids expressing the E. coli gene cod ing for bacteriophage lambda receptor were reported previously, and introdu ction of such plasmids into cells of some other bacteria made them sensitiv e to phage lambda infection. However, we found that these systems were not efficient for Vibrio harveyi, one of the most frequently investigated speci es of marine bacteria. Here we describe construction of a broad-host-range plasmid expressing the lamB gene. Introduction of this plasmid to V. harvey i cells and expression of lamB made this strain susceptible to bacteriophag e lambda adsorption and lambda DNA injection. Foreign genetic material coul d be introduced into cells of this strain using a cosmid vector.