Construction of Mobilizable Mini-Tn7 Vectors for Bioluminescent Detection of Gram-Negative Bacteria and Single-Copy Promoter lux Reporter Analysis

We describe the construction of mini-Tn7-based broad-host-range vectors encoding lux genes as bioluminescent reporters. These constructs can be mobilized into the desired host(s) by conjugation for chromosomal mini-Tn7-lux integration and are useful for localization of bacteria during infections or for characterizing regulation of promoters of interest in Gram-negative bacteria.