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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2002, p. 2619-2623, Vol. 68, No. 5
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.5.2619-2623.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Cloning of Escherichia coli lacZ and lacY Genes and Their Expression in Gluconobacter oxydans and Acetobacter liquefaciens
Hesham E. Mostafa,,
Knut J. Heller,* and Arnold Geis
Institute for Microbiology, Federal Dairy Research Centre, 24103 Kiel, Germany
Received 5 December 2001/
Accepted 28 February 2002

ABSTRACT
An efficient transformation protocol for
Gluconobacter oxydans and
Acetobacter liquefaciens strains was developed by preparation
of electrocompetent cells grown on yeast extract-ethanol medium.
Plasmid pBBR122 was used as broad-host-range vector to clone
the
Escherichia coli lacZY genes in
G. oxydans and
A. liquefaciens. Although both
lac genes were functionally expressed in both
acetic acid bacteria
, only a few transformants were able to
grow on lactose. However, this ability strictly depended on
the presence of a plasmid expressing both
lac genes. Mutations
in the plasmids and/or in the chromosome were excluded as the
cause of growth ability on lactose.

INTRODUCTION
Gluconobacter and
Acetobacter are industrially important acetic
acid bacteria. They oxidize many sugars and sugar alcohols to
yield valuable products such as sorbose and gluconic and ketogluconic
acids. So far, only a few genetic tools have been developed
for and applied to these bacteria. Transposon Tn
5 mutagenesis
in the direct glucose oxidation pathway of
Gluconobacter oxydans ATCC 9937 has been carried out (
10). Transfer of RP4::Mu from
Escherichia coli into
G. oxydans has been shown, but with extremely
low transfer frequencies (
14). Some shuttle vector transformation
protocols for
G. oxydans have been developed (
7,
8,
9,
21,
24)
and used for the cloning of genes from
Acetobacter liquefaciens and
G. oxydans into
G. oxydans strains (
20,
22).
Gluconobacter is metabolically active even at rather low pH. This would make it a promising candidate, e.g., for conversion of residual lactose in whey, if it were able to metabolize lactose (4). However, conversion of lactose to gluconic acid in whey by Gluconobacter currently depends on a costly hydrolysis process using externally added ß-galactosidase (5, 25). So far, only one attempt to introduce the genes of the lac operon of E. coli into G. oxydans has been reported. Transposon Tn951, carrying the lacIZY genes (3), was conjugally transferred from E. coli into G. oxydans. The Tn951-encoded ß-galactosidase was weakly expressed; however, the transconjugants were unable to grow on lactose as the sole carbon source (2).
In order to test whether lactose metabolism could be established in G. oxydans, the following steps were undertaken: (i) establishment of an efficient transformation system in G. oxydans, (ii) cloning of the E. coli lacZY genes in a shuttle vector and transformation into G. oxydans, (iii) determination of functional gene expression of the transgenes, and (iv) characterization of recombinant G. oxydans strains obtained.

Electrotransformation of Gluconobacter and Acetobacter.
Plasmid pBBR122 (
mob Cm
r Km
r, 5304 bp), derived from
Bordetella bronchiseptica plasmid pBBR1 (
1,
6,
11) (purchased from MoBiTec,
Göttingen, Germany), stably replicates in many gram-negative
bacteria. However, transformation of the plasmid into different
G. oxydans strains grown in glucose-yeast extract-peptone medium
(YPG) (
15) proved inefficient. Since growth on glucose is known
to favor slime production, we used YE (4% ethanol, 1% yeast
extract, pH 6.0) as growth medium instead.
G. oxydans and A. liquefaciens strains were grown overnight in YE. Cultures were diluted 1:10 into 25 ml of prewarmed YE and incubated with aeration until the cells reached early log phase (1 x 108 to 2 x 108 cells/ml; optical density at 550 nm, 0.5 to 0.8). They were transferred to centrifuge tubes, incubated on ice for 15 min, and kept cold through the rest of the procedure. The cells were sedimented at 2,700 x g for 10 min at 4°C and washed with 10 ml of cold 1 mM HEPES (pH 7.0). The sedimenting and washing procedure was repeated once. The cells were suspended in 5 ml of cold 10% glycerol and sedimented again. Finally, the cells were suspended in 0.5 ml of cold 10% glycerol. Aliquots of 65 µl were shock-frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80°C. After thawing on ice, 65 µl of competent Gluconobacter or Acetobacter cells was mixed with DNA (0.25 to 0.5 µg/ml) in a chilled microcentrifuge tube. The cell-DNA mixture was transferred to a cold 0.1-cm-diameter cuvette. One pulse with the gene pulser (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Richmond, Calif.) was set at 2.0 kV and 25 µF, with the pulse controller set at 200
. The cells were immediately diluted with 0.9 ml of YE, transferred to a tube, and incubated at 30°C for 1 to 4 h. Thereafter, the cells were plated on agar medium selective for transformants and incubated at 30°C.
As a control, E. coli HB101 (17) was electroporated as described by Provence and Curtiss (16).
Competent cells prepared from ethanol-grown G. oxydans or Acetobacter strains were efficiently transformed with pBBRI22 by our electroporation protocol. Transformation rates of up to 1.7 x 105 transformed cells/µg of DNA were obtained, depending on the strain and on the duration of phenotypic expression (pe) (Table 1).

Construction of pBBR122 derivatives bearing the E. coli lacZY genes.
E. coli XL1-Blue (
17) was used as host for the construction
of recombinant plasmids. All constructions, as shown in Fig.
1, were verified by restriction analyses (not shown).
Plasmid pEwt120E harboring part of the
E. coli lac operon (
O1/P lacZ lacY; kindly provided by H. Assmann, University of Cologne)
was digested with
EcoRI and
NotI. The 3.25-kb fragment consisting
of the
lac operator/promoter sequence and a 3'-end-truncated
lacZ gene was ligated with a 4.3-kb
EcoRI-
NotI fragment of the
vector plasmid pBBR122 containing the kanamycin resistance (Km
r)
marker and replication functions, resulting in plasmid pHM1
(7,539 bp). This plasmid was digested with
EcoRI and ligated
with a 1.3-kb
EcoRI fragment of pEwt120E carrying the 3' end
of
lacZ and the complete
lacY gene. The resulting plasmid, pHM2
(8,897 bp), contains the
lacZ and
lacY genes in proper orientation.
To remove the original E. coli promoter sequence from pHM2, an 880-bp AatII-NotI fragment was replaced by a 649-bp AatII-NotI fragment of plasmid pORI13 (18). This fragment restored the lacZ gene but did not contain a promoter sequence. In the resulting plasmid, pHM3, the lacZY genes were fused out of frame with the mob gene of the vector and, thus, were set under the control of the mob promoter located about 600 bp upstream of the start of the lacZ gene.
All constructed plasmids were successfully transformed into the Gluconobacter and Acetobacter strains listed in Table 1. Maximal transformation rates per microgram of DNA were as follows: for pHM1, 5.5 x 104 in G. oxydans DSM 3503, with 2 h of pe; pHM2, 1.1 x 104 in A. liquefaciens LMG 1382, with 1 h of pe; pHM3, 2.5 x 104 in A. liquefaciens LMG 1382, with 3 h of pe.

Functional expression of the cloned lacZ and lacY genes in E. coli.
Functional expression of the cloned genes was tested by complementation
in
lac-deficient mutants of
E. coli. Plasmids pHM1 through pHM3
were transformed into
E. coli XL1-Blue (
lacZ) (
17) and HB101
(
lacY) and tested for Lac
+ phenotypes on 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-ß-
D-galactopyranoside
(X-Gal)-Luria-Bertani-eosin-methylene blue-lactose-agar and
for ß-galactosidase activity in permeabilized cells
and in cell extracts (
13). Plasmids pHM2 and pHM3 restored ß-galactosidase
activity in XL1-Blue and complemented the lactose permease defect
in HB101.

Expression of lacZ and lacZ in G. oxydans and A. liquefaciens.
Plasmids pHM2 and pHM3 were successfully transferred by electroporation
into five
G. oxydans strains (DSM 2003, DSM 2343, DSM 3503,
DSM 3504, and DSM 50049) and
A. liquefaciens LMG 1832. Deep-
and light-blue colonies were obtained from YPG-X-Gal-kanamycin
plates. Deep-blue ones were picked, grown in YPG-kanamycin medium,
and tested for ß-galactosidase activity. Enzyme activities
of the acetic acid bacteria transformed with pHM2 or pHM3 were
comparable to the activities of isopropyl-ß-
D-thiogalactopyranoside
(IPTG)-induced
E. coli XL1-Blue cells transformed with the same
plasmids and grown in lactose medium. In cell extracts of XL1-Blue
and strains DSM 2343, 3503, and 3504, ß-galactosidase
activities ranged between 470 and 690 U/ml, whereas activities
between 100 and 350 U/ml were recorded for cell extracts of
strains DSM 50049 and LMG 1832.
Cell lysates of G. oxydans 3503 and G. oxydans 3503(pHM2) were analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (12). A protein band with an apparent molecular mass of 116 kDa was detected only in the recombinant strain (not shown). Activity staining with o-nitrophenyl-ß-D-galactopyranoside (ONPG) on nondenaturing polyacrylamide gels revealed single bands with identical mobilities for cell extracts of strain 3503(pHM2) (not shown). These results demonstrated thatin contrast to the data of Condon et al. (2)active ß-galactosidase can be produced in G. oxydans at a high level.
The presence of intact lacY genes on the plasmids was further verified by DNA sequencing using the dideoxy-chain termination procedure (19) with synthetic primers binding upstream and downstream of lacY. The lacY sequences of pHM2 and pHM3 were identical to the lacY sequence of pEwt120E and to the published lacY sequence of E. coli (23). However, since improper integration into or orientation within the membrane of the lactose permease may result in impaired lactose transport, G. oxydans 3503(pHM3) was tested for lactose transport by measuring ONPG hydrolysis by intact cells (26). Transport rates comparable to the transport rate of E. coli DH1 (lac+) (17) were observed (data not shown). All together, our results demonstrated that the recombinant G. oxydans strains, harboring plasmid pHM2 or pHM3, expressed active lactose transport and ß-galactosidase systems.
G. oxydans cells functionally expressing lacZY should be able to grow on lactose, because the lactose taken up is cleaved into galactose and glucose, the latter of which is a sugar that is readily metabolized intracellularly. Galactose, on the other hand, is metabolized only after exhaustion of glucose and after a rather long adaption phase. Only about 1% of the glucose-starved cells become able to metabolize galactose (25). Two hundred deep-blue colonies of transformants carrying either pHM2 or pHM3 were transferred into yeast extract-peptone-lactose medium (YPL), containing lactose as the sole carbon source. Despite the fact that all tested transformants showed Lac+ phenotypes on X-Gal plates and expressed lacZ efficiently, only four transformants were able to grow in lactose medium after a long (48- to 96-h) adaption phase. In contrast to transformants grown in YPG, those pregrown in YPL started growing immediately after being subcultured in fresh YPL (Fig. 2). Metabolism of lactose was clearly indicated by reduction of the lactose content in the growth medium and concomitant pH reduction indicating acid production (Fig. 2). Growth on lactose was dependent on the presence of pHM2 or pHM3, since plasmid-cured purified derivatives were unable to grow on lactose (not shown).
Since only a few transformants were able to grow on lactose,
the possibility of whether mutations in the plasmid and/or in
the chromosome were responsible for that growth phenotype had
to be tested. First, plasmids were isolated from transformants
growing in lactose (lactose-growing transformants) and from
those not growing in lactose (non-lactose-growing transformants),
and they were tested for functional
lac genes in complementation
assays. Independently of their origins, all plasmids complemented
lacZ in XL1-Blue and the defective
lacY gene in
E. coli HB101.
When they were determined, the
lacY sequences of two (one carrying
pHM2 and one carrying pHM3) lactose-growing isolates and two
non-lactose-growing isolates were found to be identical to each
other and to the published
lacY sequence of
E. coli (
23). Furthermore,
similar lactose transport activities were observed for a lactose-growing
strain and a non-lactose-growing strain (not shown). Second,
plasmid-cured strains of lactose-growing cells were transformed
with pHM3 isolated from lactose-growing cells. If the lactose-growing
phenotype was due to mutations in the plasmid and/or the chromosome,
all transformants should be able to immediately grow on lactose
after transformation. Plasmid curing was performed by growing
strains in medium without antibiotic. Table
2 shows that plasmids
pHM2 and pHM3 were more easily lost in glucose medium than in
lactose medium and that pHM2 appeared to be segregationally
more stable than pHM3. Plasmid-cured cells of
G. oxydans 3503
(pHM3) isolated from the culture grown on lactose were retransformed
with pHM3 purified from the lactose-grown parent strain. Dark-blue
colonies appearing on YPG-X-Gal-kanamycin plates were transferred
into YPL. None of about 200 colonies tested was able to grow
on lactose. This clearly indicated that neither mutations on
the chromosome nor those on the plasmid nor those on both DNA
molecules were responsible for growth on lactose of the
lacZ+Y+ G. oxydans strains. However, formally we cannot exclude the
possibility that a tiny fraction of mutated plasmids gave rise
to cells growing on lactose. In line with this argument could
be the observation from the experiments on segregational stability
that apparently a rather small fraction of cells able to grow
on lactose (11% of cells carrying pHM3 after eight growth cycles
on YPL medium) sustained those cells which had lost the plasmid
and were thus unable to grow on lactose (Table
2). It should
be noted that yeast extract as the cause for growth of the latter
cells had been ruled out.
So far, the findings regarding growth on lactose remain a puzzle,
and certainly more investigations are needed to gain insight
into this problem. One aspect that may be relevant is that when
lactose is provided as the carbon source to
lacZ+Y+ Gluconobacter cells, cleavage by ß-galactosidase results in the
simultaneous accumulation of glucose and galactose inside the
cell. This is a very unusual situation for
Gluconobacter cells,
since glucose and galactose, even if provided simultaneously
as carbon sources, will usually never be present together inside
the cells. Galactose is metabolized slowly only after exhaustion
of glucose, and only about 1% of the starved cells become able
to metabolize galactose (
25). The inability to grow on lactose
of most of the recombinant
G. oxydans cells bearing functional
lacZ and
lacY genes thus may be due to an unknown inhibitory
or regulatory effect of galactose present intracellularly during
glucose metabolism. Since such an effect would be of importance
for the biotechnological exploitation of
Gluconobacter in whey
fermentations, we will further analyze this possible effect
by testing in cell extracts inhibition by galactose of glycolytic
enzymes. A first attempt to approach the problem by analyzing
lacZ+Y+ G. oxidans strains grown on lactose, glucose, or galactose
for growth on each of the three sugars has failed so far, since
the growth patterns observed did not provide any clues to a
solution of the problem.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The help of M. Menzel and V. Wind with DNA sequencing and useful
advice on molecular techniques from S. Lick are gratefully acknowledged.
H.E.M. was supported by a scholarship from the Egyptian Government and DAAD (Channel Program).

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institute for Microbiology, Federal Dairy Research Centre, P.O. Box 6069, D-24121 Kiel, Germany. Phone: 49-(0)431-609 2340. Fax: 49-(0)431-609 2306. E-mail:
heller{at}bafm.de.

Present address: Mubarak City for Scientific Research, Institute for Genetic Engineering, Research Area-Borg El Arab, Post Code 21934, Alexandria, Egypt. 

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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2002, p. 2619-2623, Vol. 68, No. 5
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.5.2619-2623.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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