putida PCL1445 (data not shown). The stability of the plasmids and the transposon integration was

tested by subculturing in nonselective media (without antibiotic selection pressure) for approximately 30 generations. Samples of the subcultures were plated and colonies were screened for the expression of mcherry by fluorescence microscopy. Strain PCL1481 carrying miniTn7∷mcherry did not show any loss of integration. No loss of plasmid was observed for PCL1479 carrying pMP7604, whereas 3% of the colonies of strain PCL1480 carrying pMP7605 had lost fluorescence at day 3 (data not shown). A qualitative and quantitative analysis for mCherry production in P. putida PCL1445 tagged with pMP7604, pMP7605 and pMP7607 was performed in order to evaluate the resulting brightness of the different selleck inhibitor constructs. Cells of overnight cultures were visualized using fluorescence and light microscopy (Fig. 3a) and fluorescence was quantified using fluorometry (Fig. 2b). mcherry expression was detected at the single-cell level for all tagged strains. Microscopic and fluorometric analyses showed that strain PCL1480 (harboring pMP7605) produced the highest amount of mCherry and strain PCL1481 (containing miniTn7-mcherry)

produced the lowest amount (Fig. 3a and b). The strains PCL1479, http://www.selleckchem.com/products/azd2014.html PCL1480 and PCL1481 produced mCherry in a ratio of 15 : 95 : 1, respectively. No significant fluorescence was detected for P. putida PCL1445 cells and strains PCL1477 and PCL1478 containing the cloning vectors pME6031 and pBBR1MCS-5 (Fig. 2b). To evaluate the applicability of the mCherry marker vectors for tagging Gram-negative bacteria, several other Gram-negative spp., such as P. fluorescens WCS365 (an efficient root colonizer), P. aeruginosa PAO1 (a model strain for cystic fibrosis research)

and E. tarda FL6-60 (a fish pathogen and model for zebrafish immunology), were transformed with pMP7604 and pMP7605. This yielded PCL1700, PCL1701, PCA0241, PCA0242, PCA0239 and PCA0240, respectively. Fluorescence microscopy analysis showed the production of mCherry for all transformed strains (data not shown). Single colonies were isolated and overnight cultures were grown for quantitative analysis of mCherry production and comparison with P. putida PCL1445 (Fig. 4). Strains containing pMP7605 showed the highest mCherry Florfenicol production. Comparable mCherry production levels were observed among the four strains tested, except for the one carrying pMP7605, which showed a lower level of expression in E. tarda FL6-60. To analyze the applicability of the mcherry-expressing constructs pMP7604, pMP7605 and pMP7607 in established test systems, which are not suitable for efficient application of antibiotic pressure, P. putida PCL1445-tagged strains were allowed to form biofilms on glass (in vitro biofilm assay) and on tomato roots (in vivo assay used to study root colonization). Using CLSM, the tagged strains were visualized at the single-cell level in both assays (Fig.