Development of an anhydrotetracycline-inducible gene expression system for solvent-producing Clostridium acetobutylicum: A useful tool for strain engineering

Clostridium acetobutylicum is an important solvent (acetone–butanol–ethanol) producing bacterium. However, a stringent, effective, and convenient-to-use inducible gene expression system that can be used for regulating the gene expression strength in C. acetobutylicum is currently not available. Here, we report an anhydrotetracycline-inducible gene expression system for solvent-producing bacterium C. acetobutylicum. This system consists of a functional chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene promoter containing tet operators (tetO), Pthl promoter (thiolase gene promoter from C. acetobutylicum) controlling TetR repressor expression cassette, and the chemical inducer anhydrotetracycline (aTc). The optimized system, designated as pGusA2-2tetO1, allows gene regulation in an inducer aTc concentration-dependent way, with an inducibility of over two orders of magnitude. The stringency of TetR repression supports the introduction of the genes encoding counterselective marker into C. acetobutylicum, which can be used to increase the mutant screening efficiency. This aTc-inducible gene expression system will thus increase the genetic manipulation capability for engineering C. acetobutylicum.

► An aTc-inducible gene expression system was developed for Clostridium acetobutylicum.
► Genes can be inducibly expressed in an inducer concentration-dependent way.
► An inducibility of over two orders of magnitude can be achieved.
► This system is stringent enough to turn on/off the toxic genes in C. acetobutylicum.