Gene replacement in Staphylococcus carnosus and Staphylococcus xylosus

A system for high-efficiency gene replacement in Staphylococcus carnosus and Staphylococcus xylosus has been developed, that is based on temperature-sensitive Escherichia coli–Staphylococcus shuttle vectors for fragment delivery and erythromycin resistance cassettes to facilitate selection of genomic copies of disrupted genes. The approach was tested by constructing a phosphotransferase-deficient mutant of S. carnosus and an S. xylosus mutant strain unable to utilize sucrose. Allelic replacements were observed at rather high frequencies, ranging from ∼10% for the ptsI gene in S. carnosus up to 50% for the scrB gene in S. xylosus. These differences most likely reflect the length of homology rather than strain-specific variations in recombination efficiencies. Apart from the staphylococcal species tested in this study, the system appears to be applicable in other staphylococci.