A vector system for efficient and economical switching of a ura4(+) module to three commonly used antibiotic marker cassettes in Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

We describe here the development of a set of plasmid vectors that allow simple, efficient and economical switching of a ura4(+) module in existing Schizosaccharomyces pombe strains to any of the three routinely used antibiotic marker cassettes, kanMX6, hphMX6 and natMX6. In principle, the applications of this system can also be extended to switching ura4(+) for additional MX6 module-based cassettes, such as bleMX6, as long as the antibiotic marker has been cloned into an ura4(+) module-switching vector. We illustrate the application of this set of vectors in exchange of the ura4(+) marker in existing strains with three antibiotic marker cassettes with high efficiency.