Jpn. J. Infect. Dis., 65 (3), 252-255, 2012

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Masaru Usui¹, Mototaka Hiki¹, Koichi Murakami², Manao Ozawa¹, Hidetaka Nagai¹, and Tetsuo Asai¹*

¹National Veterinary Assay Laboratory, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo 185-8511; and ²Division of Pathology and Bacteriology, Fukuoka Institute of Health and Environmental Sciences, Fukuoka 818-0135, Japan

(Received December 9, 2011. Accepted March 2, 2012)

*Corresponding author: Mailing address: National Veterinary Assay Laboratory, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 1-15-1 Tokura, Kokubunji, Tokyo 185-8511, Japan. Tel: +81-42-321-1841, Fax: +81-42-321-1769, E-mail: このメールアドレスはスパムボットから保護されています。閲覧するにはJavaScriptを有効にする必要があります。

SUMMARY: Bacteriocin-producing Escherichia coli (donors) rapidly kill conventional recipient E. coli DH5α in conjugation experiments. To evaluate plasmid transferability of bacteriocin-producing donors, we established 2 different bacteriocin-resistant mutants derived from E. coli DH5α and used them as recipients. When the bacteriocin-resistant mutants were used in conjugation experiments, the transconjugant recovery from 20 bacteriocin-producing donors increased from 5% (1/20) to 65% (13/20), and the transfer frequencies increased. These results showed that bacteriocins inhibited the transfer of the R-plasmid from bacteriocin-producing donors. Thus, application of bacteriocin-resistant recipients might aid the evaluation of the potential transferability of plasmids from bacteriocin-producing donors.