Desenvolvimento de um veto bifuncional para a bactéria endofítica Enterobacter agglomerans e Escherichia coli.

Abstract

Endophytic microorganisms can be utilized in distinct ways in Biotechnology science. Among them, one of most interesting uses is as heterologue gene carriers into plants, allowing the development of new Biotechnologic processes, which makes relevant the development of vectors from native plasmids from the endophytic bacterias itselves for genetic transformation of this kind of bacteria. Studies involving Enterobacter agglomerans, a endophytic bacteria isolated from Copaifera multijuga (copaiba tree), demonstrated the presence of a small, cryptic plasmid named pEA1. Based on this plasmid, the pEA1.0 and pEA2.4 plasmids were developed. pEA1.0 was built from a fragment of PstI (1000 bp), cloned in pUC18. pEA2.4 was developed from an amplified fragment (2415 bp), cloned in the vector pCR2.1TOPO (Invitrogen), which allowed, by primer walking, the determination of the complete sequence of the original plasmid (2545 bp), which had been previously recorded in GenBank (access DQ659147). The sequence analysis showed a GC level of 34% and an AT level of 66%. The restriction map was determined using NEBCutter2.0. Comparison between pEA1 sequence and the data bank revealed high similarity (62%) with the sequence of the pIGMS31 plasmid (2520 bp) from Klebsiella pneumoniae. Using the BlastX and ORF finder softwares, the result demonstrated the presence of two ORFs, one of them similar (E value=-98) to ORF2 of pIGMS31 (AY543072.1) isolated from K. pneumoniae. The pEA2.4 plasmid was used to genetically transform Escherichia coli and E. agglomerans by the Tris-calcium/thermal shock method. Besides the capability of pEA2.4 to genetically transform E. coli cells, it has showed itself capable of transforming E. agglomerans as well, which can actually acquire resistance to kanamicine. This reflects the bifunctional chacter of pEA2.4. The transformation efficacy of E. agglomerans using pEA2.4 extracted from E. coli was about 5 x 104 T/μg, while the same process with pEA2.4 extracted from E. agglomerans itself showed a ten times higher efficacy (5,1 x 105 T/μg), probably because of the avoidance of host restriction. The pEA2.4 plasmid will be used as foundation for the development of heterologue gene expression vectors in E. agglomerans.