Cloning and expression vectors for a Gram-positive host, Streptomyces lividans

The choice of an expression system for the meta-genomic DNA of interest is of vital importance for the detection of any particular gene or gene cluster. Most of the screens to date have used the Gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli as a host for the meta-genomic gene libraries. However, the use of E. coli introduces a potential host bias since only 40% of the enzymatic activities may be readily recovered by random cloning in E. coli (Gabor et al., Environ Microbiol 6:879-886, 2004). To recover some of the remaining 60%, alternative cloning hosts such as Streptomyces spp. have been used (Lorenz and Eck, Nat Rev Microbiol 3:510-516, 2005). Streptomycetes are high-GC Gram-positive bacteria that belong to the Actinomycetales, and they have been studied extensively in the last 10 years as an alternative expression system (reviewed in Vrancken and Anné, Future Microbiol 4:181-188, 2009). Streptomyces is extremely well suited for the expression of DNA from other actinomycetes and genomes of high GC content (Wang et al., Org Lett 2:2401-2404, 2000). Furthermore, due to its high innate secretion capacity, it can be a superior system than E. coli for the production of many extra-cellular proteins.