DEVELOPMENT OF A NOVEL LUCIFERASE REPORTER TOOL FOR HIGH THROUGHPUT GENE EXPRESSION ANALYSIS IN STREPTOMYCES

Abstract

<p>Streptomycetes biology and genetics encompasses a variety of interesting features including multicellular growth, rich secondary metabolite production, and extensive environmental sensory and response systems. The characteristically large genomes of streptomycetes makes studying the diverse external stimuli intricate and internal regulation of these gene systems a challenge. Currently, there does not exist an efficient, cost-effective method of high throughput gene expression analysis in streptomycetes. Luciferase reporters have been used successfully in <em>Streptomyces coelicolor</em> to measure select promoter activity, however, they have demonstrated limited success in other strains and are not favourable to gene expression studies on a larger scale. Here, I present pLHR, a novel luciferase-based reporter tool designed specifically for high throughput gene expression studies in streptomycetes as well as the preliminary results which support the further development of this tool for gene expression profiling in <em>S. coelicolor</em>. Once developed, pLHR may be used to generate libraries of <em>Streptomyces</em> reporter stains to measure promoter activity repeatedly under variable conditions for the duration of the organism’s complex lifecycle.</p>