PLoS One 2011, 6:e19235.PubMedCentralPubMedCrossRef 75. Bignell DRD, Warawa JL, Strap JL, Chater KF, Leskiw BK: Study of the bldG locus suggests that an anti-anti-sigma factor and an anti-sigma

factor may be involved in Streptomyces coelicolor antibiotic production and sporulation. Microbiol 2000, 146:2161–2173. 76. Westbye AB, Leung MM, Florizone SM, Taylor TA, Johnson JA, Fogg PC, Beatty JT: Phosphate concentration and the putative sensor kinase protein CckA modulate cell lysis and release of the Rhodobacter capsulatus gene transfer agent. J Bacteriol 2013, 195:5025–5040.PubMedCrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions RGM and ASL designed the research. RGM performed the experiments and analyzed the data. RGM

and ASL wrote the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Zymomonas mobilis is a Gram-negative www.selleckchem.com/products/LY294002.html facultative anaerobic bacterium, which has attracted significant interest over recent years for its use in the industrial-scale production of ‘bioethanol’ [1–5]. This microorganism is able to ferment glucose, fructose or sucrose to ethanol, with extremely high molecular efficiencies and minimum accompanying levels of biomass formation. As a ‘generally regarded as safe’ (GRAS) microorganism, Z. mobilis has also been used for a variety of other biotechnological purposes, such as the production of levan (polyfructan) [6, 7] or amino acids [8]. Over the past 20 years or so, significant effort has been Selleckchem AZD4547 spent on genetically ‘engineering’ its metabolic capabilities and physiological TCL activities. These have largely focused on extending its limited substrate range, enabling it to utilize carbohydrates that are abundant in lignocellulosic feedstocks [2, 4, 5, 9–12]. Genetic engineering applications in Z. mobilis have commonly utilized plasmid vectors housing heterologous genes encoding proteins with the desired functionalities [12]. Cloning vectors that are routinely used in Escherichia coli, such as those derived from pBR322 or pUC18, cannot be stably-maintained

in Z. mobilis[12]. On the other hand, several types of bacterial broad-host range plasmids are able to replicate in Z. mobilis cells (e.g. derivatives of pBBR1MCS, RSF1010 and the incW R plasmid Sa), and have been used for a variety of heterologous gene expression applications. However, they are prone to structural (genetic) instability, and their relatively large size constrains gene cloning strategies [12–15]. Consequently, the most common approach for heterologous gene expression in Z. mobilis has involved E. coli – Z. mobilis shuttle vectors; which incorporate replicons from E. coli plasmids, as well as those from native plasmids isolated from various Z. mobilis strains [12, 13, 16–22]. Four native plasmids from Z.