Methods and Materials for Improving Bacterial Conjugation

Patent Status

Patent Pending

Brief Description

When a delivered plasmid lacks exclusion genes during bacterial conjugation is a phenomenon known as lethal zygosis. The effect of this lethal zygosis is a severe bottleneck for genetic engineering.

UC researchers have developed materials and methods that improve bacterial conjugation.  This replication incompetent vectors that include a nucleic acid sequence that can encode an exclusion polypeptide in a donor bacterial cell can protect a recipient bacterial cell from lethal zygosis.

Suggested uses

• genetic engineering and synthetic biology
• microbial strain development for biotechnology
• industrial fermentation optimization
• antibiotic resistance and gene transfer studies
• microbiome engineering and therapeutic research

Advantages

• protects recipient cells during conjugation, significantly improving survival rates
• enables more reliable and efficient DNA delivery between bacterial cells
• reduces loss of engineered strains, saving time and resources