JS5 - any clues?

[Dom Spinella]

> Gudday peeps,
> 
> Could anyone please point me at some information regarding E. coli strain
> JS5? We've looked at ATCC and various catalogues but cannot find anything
> about it.
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Richard

Hi Richard. JS5 is a derrivative of JS4 whose construction is described
by Leonardo and Sedivy (Bio/Technol. 8: 841; 1990). The strain is sold
commercially as competent cells by Bio Rad Labs here in the States.  It
is widely used for phage display work (the strain is F'+ and is among
the most competent for transformation with M13).  The strain is also the
only F+ strain that does not have the SupE44 amber supressor and is
therefore non-permissive for the growth of constucts with amber stop
codons.  This allows one to use it to generate M13 phage display
libraries with a biologic selection against non-recombinants.  My lab
has published on this application (for details, see McConnell et al., 
Mol. Diversity 1: 165-176; 1995).

Anyway, I have the full genotype information for JS5 and will FAX it to
you if you want -- just e-mail me directly with a FAX number.  You can
probably also get the genotype info from Bio Rad, maybe on their
website.  Hope that helps.  Cheers.  --Dom Spinella