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Stability and transmissibility of the cryptic plasmids of Rhizobium meliloti GR4

Their possible use in the construction of cloning vectors for rhizobia

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Abstract

Rhizobium meliloti strain GR4 harbours two cryptic plasmids sharing extensive regions of homology between them and with other non-symbiotic plasmids of different strains of R. meliloti. They both are very stable showing a segregation rate of less than 0.1% loss per generation. pRmeGR4a (115 MDa) is a self-transmissible plasmid at a variable frequency to other species, and it is also responsible for promoting, at low frequency, the contransfer of pRmeGR4b (140 MDa), the other cryptic plasmid of the strain. A 4.8 kb PstI fragment of pRmeGR4a, responsible for the high stability in cis of this plasmid, has been isolated and several recombinant plasmids have been constructed showing different segregation rates in the strains used in this study. Their stabilities can be considerably improved by insertion of the stabilization mrs/par region of RK2.

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  1. Departamento de Microbiología, Estación Experimental del Zaidín, CSIC, Profesor Albareda 1, E-18008, Granada, Spain

    Jesús Mercado-Blanco & José Olivares

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  1. Jesús Mercado-Blanco
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  2. José Olivares
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Mercado-Blanco, J., Olivares, J. Stability and transmissibility of the cryptic plasmids of Rhizobium meliloti GR4. Arch. Microbiol. 160, 477–485 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00245309

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00245309

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