Construction of a conditional lethal Salmonella mutant via genetic recombination using the ara system and asd gene

In order to construct a conditional lethal Salmonella mutant, an arabinose-regulated recombinant genetic system was used. The Salmonella aspartate semialdehyde dehydrogenase (asd) gene was localized under the control of araC P(araBAD) in a plasmid to create the araC P(araBAD)::asd cassette. The cassette was cloned into a plasmid carrying a p15A replication origin to create the recombinant plasmid pMMP55. The growth of Salmonella MMP10 harboring pMMP55 was dependent on the presence of arabinose. In the presence of arabinose, the Asd deficiency due to chromosomal deletion of asd in the Salmonella host was complemented by the asd gene transcribed and translated under the P(araBAD) promoter and araBAD Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence in pMMP55. Growth inhibition of the strain was demonstrated by arabinose depletion in M9 minimal medium, indicating that the strain were unable to grow in an arabinose-limited environment. In addition, the analysis of a 50% lethal dose (LD50) using mice revealed that the strain MMP10 exhibited attenuation by approximately 100-fold relative to that of the unmodified strain. In conclusion, these data suggest that the araC P(araBAD)::asd system developed in this study can be used to construct conditional lethal Salmonella mutants for application as safe, live-attenuated Salmonella vaccines.