CRISPR/Cas9-Based Methods for Inactivating Actinobacterial Biosynthetic Genes and Elucidating Function

The CRISPR/Cas9 technology allows fast and marker-less genome engineering that can be employed to study secondary metabolism in actinobacteria. Here, we report a standard experimental protocol for the deletion of a biosynthetic gene in a Streptomyces species, using the vector pCRISPomyces-2 developed by Huimin Zhao and collaborators. We also describe how carrying out metabolite analysis can reveal the putative biosynthetic function of the inactivated gene.