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A Pseudomonas putida S12 strain was constructed that efficiently produced the fine chemical cinnamic acid from glucose or glycerol via the central metabolite phenylalanine. The gene encoding phenylalanine ammonia lyase from the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides was introduced. Phenylalanine availability was the main bottleneck in cinnamic acid production, which could not be overcome by the overexpressing enzymes of the phenylalanine biosynthesis pathway. A successful approach in abolishing this limitation was the generation of a bank of random mutants and selection on the toxic phenylalanine anti-metabolite m-fluoro-phenylalanine. Following high-throughput screening, a mutant strain was obtained that, under optimised culture conditions, accumulated over 5 mM of cinnamic acid with a yield (Cmol%) of 6.7%.

Three new Lactobacillus vectors based on cryptic Lactobacillus plasmids were constructed. The shuttle vector pLP3537 consists of a 2.3-kb plasmid from Lactobacillus pentosus MD353, an erythromycin resistance gene from Staphylococcus aureus plasmid pE194, and pUC19 as a replicon for Escherichia coli. The vectors pLPE317 and pLPE323, which do not contain E. coli sequences, were generated by introducing the erythromycin resistance gene of pE194 into a 1.7-and a 2.3-kb plasmid from L. pentosus MD353, respectively. These vectors and the shuttle vector pLP825 (M.

A protocol was developed for the introduction of foreign plasmid DNA into various Bifidobacterium strains. The method, which is applicable to all Bifidobacterium species tested so far, is based on electroporation of bacteria made competent by preincubation in electroporation buffer for several hours at 4 "C. Transformation of Bifidobacterium could be achieved with a plasmid vector originating from Bifidobacterium and with plasmid vectors from Corynebacterium, but not with vectors carrying replicons from Lactococcus or Lactobacillus.