Construction of a new Streptococcus pneumoniae-Escherichia coli shuttle vector based on the replicon of an indigenous pneumococcal cryptic plasmid.

The nucleotide sequence of a cryptic plasmid (pRMG1) isolated from a type 1 Streptococcus pneumoniae has been determined and two recombinant plasmids, pRMGE1 and pRMGE2, bearing the pRMG1 replicon have been constructed. pRMGE2 is a shuttle vector for Escherichia coli and S. pneumoniae. The important characteristics of this cloning vector are: a size of 5.5 kb including a 1.4 kb fragment of pRMG1 (containing a double-stranded replication origin and an open reading frame encoding a putative replication initiation protein), a multicloning site, two antibiotic resistance markers for selection of plasmid containing cells, and blue-white colony screening in E. coli for identification of insert-containing plasmids.