Construction of an alkaline phosphatase fusion-generating transposon, mTn10phoA.

We constructed a derivative of the mini-transposon mTn10 that generates translational fusions to the phoA gene from Escherichia coli and carries the KmR determinant from Tn5. This new transposon, mTn10phoA, is carried on a mobilizable plasmid with both selectable and counterselectable markers. The plasmid carrying mTn10phoA was introduced into Legionella pneumophila. Southern hybridization analysis indicated that the mTn10phoA insertions were randomly distributed.