Abstract: | Survival of Pseudomonas fluorescens (R2f, RP4), P. fluorescens (R2f) and plasmid RP4 transfer efficiency depended on the concentration of Cu (II) and the time of incubation. The indigenous heterotrophic bacteria were more tiolerant to Cu (II) than the introduced strains. Although transconjugants were present for the first 3 days, the frequencies of conjugation and absence of transconjugants at 14 days indicate that conjugation occurred early in the incubation and that transconjugants were unable to survive for very long.The author is with the Department of Microbiology, Sllesian University, Jagiellonska 28, 40-032 Katowice, Poland |