Multiple genes deletion based on Cre-loxP marker-less gene deletion system for the strains from the genus of Pectobacterium

Abstract Strains from the genus of Pectobacterium are significant bacterial phytopathogens causing substantial economic losses globally. To understanding molecular pathogenic mechanism of Pectobacterium, genetic manipulation is often the initial work as in many other pathogens. We previously obtained many single gene deletion mutants carrying some different special antibiotic markers using homologous recombination for Pectobacterium. However, many biological processes involve multiple functionally genes, so multiple-gene deletion mutants are needed, but the limitation in types of antibiotic markers have controlled us to do so, even though the antibiotic markers might result in some unexpected effects on our understanding about the pathogenicity. In this study, we firstly introduced Cre-loxP system to construct marker-less multiple-gene deletion mutants in Pectobacterium strains.