文摘
Alphaproteobacteria of the species Azospirillum brasilense have a multicomponent genome that undergoes frequent spontaneous rearrangements, yielding changes in the plasmid profiles of strains. Specifically, variants (Cd, Sp7.K2, Sp7.1, Sp7.4, Sp7.8, etc.) of the type strain A. brasilense Sp7 that had lost a 115-MDa plasmid were previously selected. In many of them, the molecular weight of a 90-MDa plasmid (p90 or pRhico), which is a kind of “depot-for glycopolymer biosynthesis genes, increased. In this study, a collection of primers was designed to the plasmid pRhico and to the DNA of prophage ΦAb-Cd integrated in it. The use of these primers in polymerase chain reactions allowed the detection of the probable excision of ΦAb-Cd phage from the DNA of A. brasilense variants Sp7.4 and Sp7.8 and other alterations of the pRhico structure in A. brasilense strains Cd, Sp7.K2, and Sp7.8. The developed primers and PCR conditions may be recommended for primary analysis of spontaneous plasmid rearrangements in A. brasilense Sp7 and related strains. Keywords alphaproteobacteria phenotypic variation genome instability plasmid prophage