Cloning of Clostridium acetobutylicum genes and their expression in Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis.

DNA from Clostridium acetobutylicum ABKn8 was partially digested with Sau3A and the fragments obtained were inserted into the unique BamHI site of the cloning vector pHV33. The recombinant plasmids were used to transform Escherichia coli HB101 with selection for ampicillin resistance. A collection of ampicillin-resistant, tetracycline-sensitive clones representative of the Clostridium acetobutylicum genome was made. The clones were shown to carry recombinant plasmids each containing an insert of 2 to 16 kb in size. Several of them complemented the HB101 proA2 or leuB6 auxotrophic mutations. The cloned sequences were shown by Southern blot hybridization to be homologous to the corresponding ABKn8 DNA fragments.