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
J. Jasiecki et al., 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, MAR BIOTEC, 3(4), 2001, pp. 336-345
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.