Nitrogen-regulated hypermutator strain of Synechococcus sp. for use in in vivo artificial evolution.

ABSTRACT: Artificially evolved variants of proteins with roles in photosynthesis may be selected most conveniently by using a photosynthetic organism, such as a cyanobacterium, whose growth depends on the function of the target protein. However, the limited transformation efficiency of even the most transformable cyanobacteria wastes much of the diversity of mutant libraries of genes produced in vitro, impairing the coverage of sequence space. This highlights the advantages of an in vivo approach for generating diversity in the selection organism itself. We constructed two different hypermutator strains of Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7942 by insertionally inactivating or nutritionally repressing the DNA mismatch repair gene, mutS. Inactivation of mutS greatly increases the mutation rate of the cyan

SUBMITTER: Emlyn-Jones D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC262265 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature