An improved shuttle vector constructed for metabolic engineering research in Corynebacterium glutamicum.

Corynebacterium glutamicum is an industrial microorganism for production of amino acids. However, the metabolic engineering in C. glutamicum has been retarded due to lack of suitable vectors. In this study, we have constructed a shuttle vector pDXW-10 which harbors a large multiple cloning site suitable for cloning multiple genes, and a tac-M promoter suitable for constitutive gene expression in C. glutamicum. The cat gene was subcloned into the vector and the expression levels of the CAT protein were found different in Escherichia coli and C. glutamicum; high-level in the former but moderate-level in the latter. The pDXW-10 would be an ideal vector for research on metabolic engineering in C. glutamicum.