Engineering Gram-Negative Microbial Cell Factories Using Transposon Vectors

Abstract

The construction of microbial cell factories à la carte largely depends on specialized molecular biology and synthetic biology tools needed to reprogram bacteria for modifying their existing functions or for bestowing them with new-to-Nature tasks. In this chapter, we document the use of a series of broad-host-range mini-Tn5 vectors for the delivery of gene(s) into the chromosome of Gram-negative bacteria and for the generation of saturated, random mutagenesis libraries for studies of gene function. The application of these tailored mini-transposon vectors, which could also be used for chromosomal engineering of a wide variety of Gram-negative microorganisms, is demonstrated in the platform environmental bacterium Pseudomonas putida KT2440.