An engineered GFP fluorescent bacterial biosensor for detecting and quantifying silver and copper ions.

Presented here are two engineered bacterial biosensors for detecting and quantifying silver and copper ions. The biosensors contain a silver/copper resistance operon and a Green Fluorescent Protein gene that is strictly regulated through silver activated promoter regions normally found on a silver resistance gene (sil operon). The two biosensors efficiently detected silver and copper concentrations of 40 µM-300 µM and 20 µM-600 µM respectively. A strong correlation (R2 = 0.90 or above) between silver/copper and GFP signal makes it possible to quantify the ions using a linear regression. At room temperature incubation, the GFP signal of the biosensors in Ag+ saturated after 13 h. However, a detectable GFP signal was seen in 4 h.

The fluorescence theatre: a cost-effective device using theatre gels for fluorescent protein and dye screening.

Here we report a simple cost-effective device for screening colonies on plates for expression of the monomeric red fluorescent protein mRFP1 and the fluorescent dye Nile red. This device can be built from any simple light source, in our case a Quebec Colony Counter, and cost-effective theatre gels. The device can be assembled in as little as 20 min, and it produces excellent results when screening a large number of colonies.

The Completed PacBio Single-Molecule Real-Time Sequence of Methylosinus trichosporium Strain OB3b Reveals the Presence of a Third Large Plasmid.

Presented here is the complete genome sequence of the well-studied Rhizobiales methanotroph Methylosinus trichosporium strain OB3b. The assembly contains 5,183,433 bp, corresponding to a chromosome of 4,508,832 bp and three circular plasmids of 285,280 bp, 209,102 bp, and 180,219 bp.

Site-specific bacterial chromosome engineering: ΦC31 integrase mediated cassette exchange (IMCE).

The bacterial chromosome may be used to stably maintain foreign DNA in the mega-base range. Integration into the chromosome circumvents issues such as plasmid replication, plasmid stability, plasmid incompatibility, and plasmid copy number variance. This method uses the site-specific integrase from the Streptomyces phage (Φ) C31. The ΦC31 integrase catalyzes a direct recombination between two specific DNA sites: attB and attP (34 and 39 bp, respectively). This recombination is stable and does not revert. A "landing pad" (LP) sequence consisting of a spectinomycin-resistance gene, aadA (SpR), and the E. coli ß-glucuronidase gene (uidA) flanked by attP sites has been integrated into the chromosomes of Sinorhizobium meliloti, Ochrobactrum anthropi, and Agrobacterium tumefaciens in an intergenic region, the ampC locus, and the tetA locus, respectively. S. meliloti is used in this protocol. Mobilizable donor vectors containing attB sites flanking a stuffer red fluorescent protein (rfp) gene and an antibiotic resistance gene have also been constructed. In this example the gentamicin resistant plasmid pJH110 is used. The rfp gene may be replaced with a desired construct using SphI and PstI. Alternatively a synthetic construct flanked by attB sites may be sub-cloned into a mobilizable vector such as pK19mob. The expression of the ΦC31 integrase gene (cloned from pHS62) is driven by the lac promoter, on a mobilizable broad host range plasmid pRK7813. A tetraparental mating protocol is used to transfer the donor cassette into the LP strain thereby replacing the markers in the LP sequence with the donor cassette. These cells are trans-integrants. Trans-integrants are formed with a typical efficiency of 0.5%. Trans-integrants are typically found within the first 500-1,000 colonies screened by antibiotic sensitivity or blue-white screening using 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-beta-D-glucuronic acid (X-gluc). This protocol contains the mating and selection procedures for creating and isolating trans-integrants.