Plasmids of corynebacteria

Abstract

Corynebacteria are pleomorphic, asporogenous, Gram-positive bacteria. Included in this group are nonpathogenic soil corynebacteria, which are widely used for the industrial production of amino acids and detergents, and in biotransformation of steroids. Other members of this group are plant and animal pathogens. This review summarizes the current information available about the plasmids of corynebacteria. The emphasis is mainly on the small plasmids, which have been used for construction of vectors for expression of genes in these bacteria. Moreover, considerable information is now available on their nucleotide sequence, gene organization and modes of replication, which would make it possible to further manipulate these plasmids. Other plasmid properties, such as incompatibility and host range, are also discussed. Finally, use of these plasmids as cloning vectors for the expression of heterologous proteins using corynebacteria as hosts is also summarized to highlight the potential of these bacteria as hosts for recombinant DNA.

Mechanisms of Antibiotic Resistance in Corynebacterium spp. Causing Infections in People

“…on the pXZ10145 plasmid -5.3 kb and in C. xerosis on pTP10 -45.0 kb (Deb & Nath, 1999). In C. striatum strain M82B (former C. xerosis M82B) (Tauch et al, 1998) chloramphenicol resistance gene cmx (chloramphenicol and exports) was detected as an integral part of the transposon Tn5564, which contains a complete copy of the insertion sequence IS1513.…”

“…It creates a powerful mechanism of active transport (efflu) causing pumping out of drugs from the cell via specific transport protein localized in the cytoplasmic membrane (Tauch et al, 1999). R-plasmid pTP10 found in C. xerosis also contains determinants of resistance to tetracycline with parallel resistance to other antibiotics, such as chloramphenicol, kanamycin and erythromycin (Kono et al, 1983; whereas, in strains of C. melassecola, the species used to produce glutamate, the resistance gene to tetracycline was found on another mobile element -plasmid pAG1 (Deb & Nath, 1999).…”

“…are often located on large plasmids, e.g. resistance to tetracycline, chloramphenicol, erythromycin and streptomycin on plasmid pTP10 in C. xerosis (Deb & Nath, 1999;Hodgson et al, 1990), but also on trensposons (Delal et al, 2008).…”

“…occurring on the skin (Serwold-Davis & Groman, 1986). The replicon 2.6-kb EcoRI-ClaI fragment (oriR) may be possessed by many microorganisms, including a popular commensal E. coli (Deb & Nath, 1999;Serwold-Davis et al, 1990;Serwold-Davis et al, 1987).…”

Manipulating Corynebacteria, from Individual Genes to Chromosomes

“…Stemming from the isolation of various endogenous plasmids (24,127), numerous shuttle and cloning vectors have been designed to manipulate corynebacteria. These have been extensively reviewed elsewhere (see, for example, Kirchner and Tauch [63], Martin and Gil, [76], Nakata et al [86], and Srivastava and Deb [110]).…”