Kanamycin (KNM)

Kanamycin is an aminoglycoside bacteriocidal antibiotic, available in oral, intravenous, and intramuscular forms, and used to treat a wide variety of infections. Kanamycin is isolated from the bacterium Streptomyces kanamyceticus and its most commonly used form is kanamycin sulfate. Kanamycin interacts with the 30S subunit of prokaryotic ribosomes. It induces substantial amounts of mistranslation and indirectly inhibits translocation during protein synthesis. Kanamycin is used in molecular biology as a selective agent most commonly to isolate bacteria which have taken up genescoupled to a gene coding for kanamycin resistance. Bacteria that have been transformed with a plasmid containing the kanamycin resistance gene are plated on kanamycin (50-100 ug/ml) containing agar plates or are grown in media containing kanamycin (50-100 ug/ml).