Kinetics of Loss of a Recombinant Plasmid in Bacillus subtilis

摘要

Structural instability of plasmids in B. subtilis is a well documentedphenomenon, and one of the major problems in utilizing B. subtilis for the production of recombinant proteins. Hybrid vectors capable of replication in E. coli and B. subtilis are known to replicate stably in E. coli, but thought to suffer extensive deletions in B. subtilis. Plasmid DNA rearrangements are considered to be a result of illegitimate recombination and two main models have been proposed for formation of plasmid deletions. Albertini et al. proposed that spontaneous deletions occur as a result of slipped mispairing during DNA synthesis. In this model, two elements of homology can slip and mispair during DNA replication.