Construction of a BioBricic™ compatible vector system for Rhodococcus

Throughout the past decade, the field of synthetic biology has grown rapidly. By using assembly platforms such as BioBricks (TM), scientists can quickly and easily build gene circuits or multi-step pathways. One limitation, however, is that most of these parts were designed and characterized with Escherichia coli as the target chassis. As a consequence, there exists a lack of standardized and well characterized or BioBricic (TM) compatible plasmid backbones that replicate in other potential non-model chassis organisms. The Gram-positive bacteria of the genus Rhodococcus represent an interesting chassis for biotechnological applications due to their tremendous metabolic capabilities. In this report we describe our progress toward developing a BioBrick (TM) compatible plasmid system for Rhodococcus. We demonstrate its utility for heterologous protein expression through flow cytometric analysis of the lac promoter in the oleaginous strain Rhodococcus opacus PD630. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.