Table 1.

Bacterial strains, plasmids and primers used in this study

	Characteristics	Reference
Strains
E. coli DH5α	Cloning strain
V. atypica OK5	Wild type	(Liu et al., 2012)
Δecf3	OK5 ecf3 deletion mutant	This work
Plasmids
pBST	Suicide vector of V. atypica, the beta-lactamase gene in pBluescript II KS (+) was replaced by tetM	(Liu et al., 2012)
pBST-Pmdh-pheS*	Carrier plasmid for markerless deletion of any gene	This work
pBST-Pmdh-pheS*-ecf3	Carrier plasmid for ecf3 markerless deletion	This work
Primers	Sequence (5′ to 3′)	Purpose
pheS-F	ATGGAACAAGAATTACAACGCATA	pheS amplification
pheS-R-EcoRI	CGGAATTCCTAAAATTGTTCCAAGAAACGGATATCA	pheS amplification
Pmdh-F-XhoI	CCGCTCGAGATACATACATCACTATATCTGTAACA	mdh promoter amplification
Pmdh-R	TATGCGTTGTAATTCTTGTTCCATTGTTAAAACCTCTTTTCAGAAAATATGTA	mdh promoter amplification
pheSm-F	CCAAAACCTTTCACCTTATTAGGATCA	Site-directed mutation of pheS
pheSm-R	TTTTGGTATGGGCGTAGAACGTA	Site-directed mutation of pheS
ecf3-KO-up-F	CGGGATCCGAAAAGAGTTTTTTGTGTGA	ecf3 deletion
ecf3-KO-up-R	TAAAAAATATTTTAGATTTTTAAAAGATTCGTTCCTTTCTGCCTA	ecf3 deletion
ecf3-KO-down-F	TAGGCAGAAAGGAACGAATCTTTTAAAAATCTAAAATATTTTTTA	ecf3 deletion
ecf3-KO-down-R	GCTCTAGAGTATGCCGATATTATAGGCTGCA	ecf3 deletion