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Abstract
Bacterial conjugation is the process in which genetic material is horizontally transferred between bacteria. OmpA, a highly abundant protein in the outer membrane of Escherichia coli, is a critical component required for conjugation. In order to investigate the effect of OmpA expression on Hfr conjugation, the conjugation efficiencies of E. coli strains expressing varying degrees of functional OmpA were compared. E. coli wild-type (C149), – – – OmpA (C156), and OmpA OmpC (C158) served as recipient strains for the Hfr conjugation with the E. coli HfrC donor strain. In addition to comparing the conjugation efficiencies of parental recipient strains, the conjugation efficiencies of E. coli C149, C156, and C158 strains transformed with the pCCK06-1 plasmid, previously constructed to contain the ompA gene, were also compared. No differences in conjugation efficiencies were observed between transformed and untransformed recipient strains. Both untransformed C149 and transformed C149 (pCCK06-1) recipient strains had approximately 10-to-20-fold more successful conjugations following mating with HfrC compared to the pCCK06-1 transformed and untransformed C156 and C158 recipient – strains. These results suggest that OmpA strains, C156 and C158, are able to participate in Hfr conjugations; however, these conjugations are not as efficient as wild-type (C149) strains. Introduction of plasmid-expressed functional ompA did not improve the conjugation efficiencies of the respective parental strains.