Use of an excision reporter plasmid to study the intercellular mobility of the conjugative transposon Tn916 in Gram-positive bacteria

An excision reporter plasmid pTCR9 was created to qualitatively and quantitatively characterize the intracellular mobility of the conjugative transposon Tn916 in various Gram-positive bacteria including isogenic strains with different donor potential. The excision event was suggested to be insufficient for conjugal transfer to occur and that there was no linear relationship between Enterococcus faecalis strains and either the excision frequency of pAT112 or the copy number of Tn916 circular intermediates per cell in the hosts.