1. Development of a Double-Crossover Markerless Gene Deletion System in Bifidobacterium longum: Functional Analysis of the a-Galactosidase Gene for Raffinose Assimilation.
- Author
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Hirayama, Yosuke, Sakanaka, Mikiyasu, Fukuma, Hidenori, Murayama, Hiroki, Kano, Yasunobu, Fukiya, Satoru, and Yokota, Atsushi
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BIFIDOBACTERIUM longum , *GALACTOSIDASES , *RAFFINOSE , *PLASMID genetics , *GENETIC markers , *CHROMOSOMES - Abstract
Functional analysis of Bifidobacterium genes is essential for understanding bost-Bifidobacterium interactions with beneficial effects on human health; however, the lack of an effective targeted gene inactivation system in bifidobacteria has prevented the development of functional genomics in this bacterium. Here, we report the development of a markerless gene deletion system involving a double crossover in Bifidobacterium longum. Incompatible plasmid vectors were used to facilitate a second crossover step. The conditional replication vector pBS423-&Dgr;repA, which lacks the plasmid replication gene repA, was integrated into the target gene by a first crossover event. Subsequently, the replicative plasmid pTBR101-CM, which harbors repA, was introduced into this integrant to facilitate the second crossover step and subsequent elimination of the excised conditional replication vec-tor from the cells by plasmid incompatibility. The proposed system was confirmed to work as expected in B. longum 105-A using the chromosomal full-length &bgr;-galactosidase gene as a target. Markerless gene deletion was tested using the aga gene, which en-codes &agr;-galactosidase, whose substrates include raffinose. Almost all the pTBR101-CM-transformed strains became double-crossover recombinants after subculture, and 4 out of the 270 double-crossover recombinants had lost the ability to assimilate raffinose. Genotype analysis of these strains revealed markerless gene deletion of aga. Carbohydrate assimilation analysis and &agr;-galactosidase activity measurement were conducted using both the representative mutant and a plasmid-based aga-comple-mented strain. These functional analyses revealed that aga is the only gene encoding a functional &agr;-galactosidase enzyme in B. longum 105-A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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