question_answer 51)

  What would happen when one grows a recombinant bacterium in the bioreactor but forget to add antibiotic to the medium in which there combinant is growing?

Answer:

                  In the absence of antibiotic, there will be no pressure on recombinants to retain the plasmid (containing the gene of our interest). Since, maintaining a high copy number of plasmids is a metabolic burden to the microbial cells, it will thus tend to loose the plasmid.