A family of arabinose-inducible Escherichia coli expression vectors having pBR322 copy control.

The pBAD series of expression vectors have been widely used in Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and related bacteria. However, a complication with pBAD24, the most popular of these plasmids, is that it does not contain the complete functional replication origin of pBR322 as was depicted in the original paper. Instead, pBAD24 has a pBR322-derived origin that lacks the rop gene that negatively regulates copy number and thus pBAD24 has an appreciably higher copy number than that of pBR322, particularly at elevated growth temperatures. A rop-containing derivative of pBAD24 (called pBAD322) having the copy number of pBR322 is reported together with derivatives of pBAD322 that encode resistance to chloramphenicol, kanamycin, tetracycline, spectinomycin/streptomycin, gentamycin, or trimethoprim in place of ampicillin.