Escherichia coli mutant capable

Acquisition of new metabolic activities by microorganisms has been studied deliberately since the early 1960s. Most of those studies, many of which are reviewed in detail in Mortlock,1 were conducted using well-characterized laboratory strains of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella, or Pseudomonas aeruginosa and were intended to provide insights into evolutionary processes. In most cases the new activities were catabolic functions simply because the organisms in question were already capable of all required anabolic functions. There is no reason, however, why the methods outlined below should not be applicable to isolation of mutants with novel biosynthetic capabilities, provided that a sufficiently strong selection for those capabilities can be devised. The purpose of this chapter is to provide some... 

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