Preliminary construction of a chimeric cellulose operon containing two structural genes coding for CMCase and cellobiase

CMCase, a member of cellulose decomposing enzymes, hydrolyze cellulose up to cellobiose. Cellobiase splits cellobiose to glucose units. Therefore, a linkage of the twogenes coding for CMCase and cellobiase on the same plasmid is needed to produce a cellulase complex which can produce glucose from cellulose. A genetic operon in which the two structural genes are under the control of a single promoter would be ideal for this purpose. The present report is on the linking of the two cellulase genes in one plasmid as a preliminary step of the operon construction.