Fig. 2
Elimination of comI in B. licheniformis MW3.1 and its effect on genetic competence. a Schematic overview of the genomic comI region in B. licheniformis MW3.1, the comI substitution cassette and the comI::aphA substitution strain B. licheniformis CM1. Open reading frames are shown as arrows, primers are depicted as black triangles and recombination flanks are given as rectangles with dashed lines. comI, encodes the putative competence inhibitor ComIDSM13; aphA, kanamycin resistance gene; ftsW, cell-division protein; BL05057, hypothetical protein of unknown function; BL05058, putative DNA-binding protein; BL01194, putative DNA-binding protein. b Genotypic verification of the comI::aphA substitution by PCR using the primers comI_seq_1 and comI_seq_4 and subsequent gelelectrophoretic analysis. c Transformation frequencies of B. licheniformis MW3.1 and B. licheniformis CM1 obtained by natural genetic competence with chromosomal DNA of B. licheniformis ∆spoIV (Hoffmann et al. 2010) applied to restore uracil prototrophy. The transformation frequency for B. licheniformis MW3.1 was arbitrarily set as 100%. Data are given as mean ± SD of 3 independent experiments. ***p < 0.001