Hydrocarbon monooxygenase in Mycobacterium: recombinant expression of a member of the ammonia monooxygenase superfamily.

The copper membrane monooxygenases (CuMMOs) are an important group of enzymes in environmental science and biotechnology. Areas of relevance include the development of green chemistry for sustainable exploitation of methane (CH(4)) reserves, remediation of chlorinated hydrocarbon contamination and monitoring human impact in the biogeochemical cycles of CH(4) and nitrogen. Challenges for all these applications are that many aspects of the ecology, physiology and structure-function relationships in the CuMMOs are inadequately understood.

Construction and evaluation of pMycoFos, a fosmid shuttle vector for Mycobacterium spp. with inducible gene expression and copy number control.

Molecular tools for Gram-positive bacteria such as Mycobacterium are less well-developed than those for Gram-negatives such as Escherichiacoli. This has slowed the molecular-genetic characterisation of Mycobacterium spp, which is unfortunate, since this genus has high medical, environmental and industrial significance. Here, we developed a new Mycobacterium shuttle vector (pMycoFos, 12.