Mycobacteria as Immunogens: Development of Expression Vectors for Use in Multiple Mycobacterial Species

Abstract

The development of gene transfer systems that are applicable to a wide variety of mycobacterial hosts will provide an important tool for the generation of recombinant mycobacterial candidate vaccines. Here we describe the construction of a series of hygromycin-based expression vectors that enable the expression of foreign antigens in Mycobacterium vaccae, a candidate mycobacterial delivery host. These vectors may be useful in exploring effective delivery of heterologous molecules by a variety of different mycobacterial hosts.