Published in Plasmid
Conjugative plasmids encode the genes responsible for the synthesis of conjugative pili and plasmid transfer. Expression of the conjugative machinery (including conjugative pili) may be costly to bacteria, not only due to the energetic/metabolic cost associated with their expression but also because they serve as receptors for certain viruses. Cons...
Published in Plasmid
Conjugative plasmids encode genes that enable them to transfer, by conjugation, from a given host cell to another cell. Conjugative transfer, despite being an important feature of conjugative plasmids, is not constitutive for most plasmids, the reason being that genes involved in horizontal transfer are mostly repressed. Only upon their transient d...
Published in Plasmid
As shown in the previous article, two distinct conjugative plasmids sometimes interact within bacterial cells, implicating changes of transfer rates. In most cases of interactions within bacteria, the transfer of one of the plasmids decreases. Less frequently, the transfer rate of one of the plasmids increases. Here we analyse what happens if three...
Published in Plasmid
Recently, a novel variant of the CTX-M enzyme, CTX-M-98, was detected in Escherichia coli isolates from food animals. However, few plasmids carrying blaCTX-M-98 have been fully characterized. In this study, we sequenced the complete pHeBE7 plasmid, an 86,015-bp plasmid that contains the blaCTX-M-98b, blaTEM-1, rmtB, and traT genes, using whole-geno...
Published in Plasmid
Bacterial plasmid and chromosome segregation systems ensure that genetic material is efficiently transmitted to progeny cells. Cell-based studies have shed light on the dynamic nature and the molecular basis of plasmid partition systems. In vitro reconstitutions, on the other hand, have proved to be an invaluable tool for studying the minimal compo...
Published in Plasmid
In this study, a cryptic plasmid pOfk55 from Legionella pneumophila was isolated and characterized. pOfk55 comprised 2584bp with a GC content of 37.3% and contained three putative open reading frames (ORFs). orf1 encoded a protein of 195 amino acids and the putative protein shared 39% sequence identity with a putative plasmid replication protein Re...
Published in Plasmid
The ampicillin resistance plasmid pCERC7, carrying transposon Tn2 with an IS4 insertion, was detected in the draft genome of a commensal Escherichia coli isolate. The genome data also revealed that this isolate belongs to ST131, clade B. pCERC7 is 9712bp comprised of a 3319bp backbone, Tn2::IS4 (6388bp) and 5bp of target site duplication, and was p...
Published in Plasmid
Electrotransfer mediated delivery of interleukin-12 (IL-12) gene, encoded on a plasmid vector, has already been demonstrated to have a potent antitumor efficacy and great potential for clinical application. In the present study, our aim was to construct an optimized IL-12-encoding plasmid that is safe from the regulatory point of view. In light of ...
Published in Plasmid
This study investigated the effects of the sequence arrangement and orientation of a target gene expression cassette in vectors on expression levels to determine the optimal combination for highly efficient multi-gene expression. Five plant transformation vectors were constructed using dual Bt genes, Cry1Ac and Cry3A, which differed in the sequence...
Published in Plasmid
The complete 284,628bp sequence of pH11, an IncHI2 plasmid, was determined through single-molecule, real-time (SMRT) sequencing. Harbored by a clinical Klebsiella pneumoniae strain H11, and isolated in Beijing, this plasmid contains multiple antibiotic resistance genes, including catA2, aac(6')-Ib, strB, strA, dfrA19, blaTEM-1, blaSHV-12, sul1, qac...
