A novel replication element from an Antarctic plasmid as a tool for the expression of proteins at low temperature.

Genetic manipulation of Antarctic bacteria has been very limited so far. This article reports the isolation and molecular characterization of a novel plasmid, pMtBL, from the Antarctic gram-negative bacterium Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis TAC 125. This genetic element, 4,081 bp long, appeared to be a multicopy cryptic replicon with no detectable transcriptional activity.