TABLE 1.

Bacterial strain and plasmids used in this study.

Strain and vectors	Genotypes or description	References
Strain
E. coli TOP10	F–, Φ80lacZΔM15, ΔlacX74, recA1	Invitrogen
Plasmids
pET-21a	AmpR, T7 promoter, lac operator	Novagen
pT-RFP	T vector carrying mcherry	Hui et al., 2018c
pT-GFP	T vector carrying egfp	Hui et al., 2018c
pPmer	pET-21a derivative containing merR and Pmer divergent promoter region cloned into BglII and XbaI sites	Hui et al., 2021c
pPcad	pET-21a derivative containing cadR and Pcad divergent promoter region cloned into BglII and XbaI sites	Hui et al., 2021c
pPmer-G	pPmer derivative carrying promoterless egfp and rrnB terminator cloned into NdeI and HindIII sites	This study
pR-Pmer-G	pPmer-G derivative, a promoterless mcherry cassette fused to the downstream of merR	This study
pPcad-R	pPcad derivative carrying promoterless mcherry and rrnB terminator cloned into NdeI and XhoI sites	This study
pG-Pcad-R	pPcad-R derivative, a promoterless egfp cassette fused to the downstream of cadR	This study
pR-Pcad	pET-21a derivative containing cadR-Pcad-mcherry cloned into BamHI and BglII sites	This study
pR-Pcad-Pmer-G	pR-Pcad derivative containing merR-Pmer-egfp cloned into BamHI and HindIII sites	This study