E. coli BW25141 (rrnB3 DElacZ4787 DEphoBR580 hsdR514 DE(araBAD)567 DE(rhaBAD)568 galU95 DEendA9::FRT DEuidA3::pir(wt) recA1 rph-1) was used for maintenance of the template plasmid pKD13 (GenBank™ Accession number AY048744). pKD46 (GenBank™ Accession number AY048746; Datsenko and Wanner, 2000 (link)) was made by PCR amplification of the Red recombinase genes from phage λ and cloning into pKD16, a derivative of INT-ts (Haldimann and Wanner, 2001 (link)) carrying araC and araBp from pBAD18 (Guzman et al, 1995 (link)).