Escherichia coli genes affecting recipient ability in plasmid conjugation: Are there any?

Abstract

How does the recipient cell contribute to bacterial conjugation? To answer this question we systematically analyzed the individual contribution of each Escherichia coli gene in matings using plasmid R388 as a conjugative plasmid. We used an automated conjugation assay and two sets of E. coli mutant collections: the Keio collection (3,908 E. coli single-gene deletion mutants) and a collection of 20,000 random mini-Tn10::Km insertion mutants in E. coli strain DH5α. The combined use of both collections assured that we screened > 99% of the E. coli non-essential genes in our survey.