Relationship between oriT length and efficiency of RP4-mediated conjugation from Escherichia coli to Gram-positive bacteria.

In RP4 conjugation, approximately 350 bp of the origin of transfer (oriT) is required for transfer. Within this oriT, there are binding regions for the transfer-related proteins TraI, TraK, and TraJ. We investigated the influence of deleting each protein-binding region within oriT on transfer efficiency in Escherichia coli, Streptomyces lividans, and Bacillus subtilis.