Establishment of a Successive Markerless Mutation System in Haemophilus parasuis through Natural Transformation

PLoS One. 2015 May 18;10(5):e0127393. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127393. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Haemophilus parasuis, belonging to the family Pasteurellaceae, is the causative agent of Glässer's disease leading to serious economic losses. In this study, a successive markerless mutation system for H. parasuis using two sequential steps of natural transformation was developed. By the first homologous recombination, the target genes were replaced by a cassette carrying kanamycin resistance gene and sacB (which confers sensitivity to sucrose) gene using kanamycin selection, followed by the second reconstruction to remove the selection cassette, with application of sucrose to further screen unmarked mutants. To improve DNA transformation frequency, several parameters have been analyzed further in this work. With this method, two unmarked deletions in one strain have been generated successfully. It is demonstrated that this system can be employed to construct multi-gene scarless deletions, which is of great help for developing live attenuated vaccines for H. parasuis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Blotting, Western
  • DNA / metabolism
  • Genetic Markers
  • Haemophilus parasuis / genetics*
  • Mutation / genetics*
  • Plasmids / genetics
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Sequence Deletion
  • Transformation, Genetic*

Substances

  • Genetic Markers
  • DNA

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest, grant 201303034. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.