Construction of a family of universal expression plasmid vectors

A family of universal expression vectors based on the pUC8 and pUC9 plasmids has been constructed. These vectors cover all three possible reading frames in both directions, allowing any synthetic DNA, genomic DNA or cDNA to be expressed under control of the lac promoter. The four new vectors retain the useful features of the pUC plasmids, including the blue to white color change on X-gal plates indicating the presence of an insert. This family of expression vectors is expected to be quite useful in allowing direct immunological screening of cDNA or genomic DNA banks.