• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.317-321
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• 1990

The broad-host plasmid PAM $\beta_1$ of Streptococcus faecalis DS 5 which codes for erythromycin resistance and lactose utilization was transferred into L. casei M-3 (lac-mutant) by conjugation, but was not transferred by protoplast fusion and protoplast transformation. For conjugal transfer of plasmid PAM $\beta_1$ the method of membrane filter mating was more efficient than that of agar surface mating. The rate of acid production of transconjugant C-1, C-3 was similar to L. casei YIT 9018. The proteolytic activity of transconjugant C-3 was increased 20% higher than that of wild type. Plasmid PAM $\beta_1$ was detected by a11 of the transconjugants. The transconjugants expressed lactose ulitization and erythromycin resistance.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.188-191
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• 1990

The streptococcal plasmid pAM$\beta_{1}$ (erythromycin resistance)was transferred via conjugation from Streptococcus faecalis DS 5 to Lactobacillus casei YIT 9018 by a filter mating method. The transfer frequency depended greatly on the type, pore size and side(front or back) of membrane filter. Water passing through a membrane under reduced pressure induced very tight contact between the cells, increased the transconjugation frequency about 1.3 to 37-fold when Millipore membrane filter (0.45.$\mu$m, front side up) was used.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2001

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are widely used for various food fermentation. With the recent advances in modern biotechnology, a variety of bio-products with the high economic values have been produced using microorganisms. For molecular cloning and expression studies on the gene of interest, E. coli has been widely used mainly because vector systems are fully developed. Most plasmid vectors currently used for E, coli carry antibiotic-resistant markers. As it is generally believed that the antibiotic resistance markers are potentially transferred to other bacteria, application of the plasmid vectors carrying antibiotic resistance genes as selection markers should be avoided, especially for human consump-tion. By contrast, as LAB have some desirable traits such that the they are GRAS(generally recognized as safe), able to secrete gene products out of cell, and their low protease activities, they are regarded as an ideal organism for the genetic manipulation, including cloning and expression of homologous and heterologous genes. However, the vec-tor systems established for LAB are stil insufficient to over-produce gene products, stably, limiting the use of these organisms for industrial applications. For a past decade, the two popular plasmid vectors, pAM$\beta$1 of Streptococcus faecalis and pGK12 theB. subtilis-E. coli shuttle vector derived from pWV01 of Lactococcus lactis ssp. cremoris wg 2, were most widely used to construct efficient chimeric vectors to be stably maintained in many industrial strains of LAB. Currently, non-antibiotic markers such as nisin resistance($Nis^{r}$ ) are explored for selecting recombi-nant clone. In addition, a gene encoding S-layer protein, slp/A, on bacterial cell wall was successfully recombined with the proper LAB vectors LAB vectors for excretion of the heterologous gene product from LAB Many food-grade host vec-tor systems were successfully developed, which allowed stable integration of multiple plasmid copies in the vec-mosome of LAB. More recently, an integration vector system based on the site-specific integration apparatus of temperate lactococcal bacteriophage, containing the integrase gene(int) and phage attachment site(attP), was pub-lished. In conclusion, when various vector system, which are maintain stably and expressed strongly in LAB, are developed, lost of such food products as enzymes, pharmaceuticals, bioactive food ingredients for human consump-tion would be produced at a full scale in LAB.