Transduction of plasmid DNA in macrolide producing streptomycetes.

Transduction was mediated by a 8-kb segment of bacteriophage FP43 DNAcloned into plasmid pIJ702: The resulting plasmid, pRHBlOl, was packaged in bacteriophage heads as linear concatemers and was transduced into about 80% of the Streptomyces species tested1}. We showed that the efficiency of transduction can vary markedly depending on the cell growth conditions, and that under optimum growth conditions both highly restricting and relatively nonrestricting strains of Streptomyces fradiae can be transduced at high efficiencies1 ~4). Transduction frequencies varied by 1 ,000-fold with growth conditions in S. fradiae, and optimum transduction frequencies were obtained with cells grown to mid to late exponential phase at 39°C3). 1725