Does my bacteria have a plasmid? - (Sep/27/2004 )
How do I know my interest strain(bacteria,gram+) having plasmid?and If it has,how do I get it?
Thanks
You need to do a plasmid isolation from your bacteria and run it on gel. easiest is to use a commercial kit (we use Qiagen or Roche , there are probably others as well) which has complete instructions and takes about an hour. you will need several ml of pure culture of your bacteria .
Good Luck! 
Leah
My strain is micrococcus and I haven't the protocol for the extration of its plasmid.Do you have one?
By the way, can you tell me which kit is better about it?
Thanks!
sorry, i didn't notive you said gram plus!
All protocols i know have been designed for coli which is gram -. i don't think it should make much difference expect you'd probably have to add a step to break down cell wall - lysosyme might do it. also, if your cells clump that might also be a problem.
i would try searching through Google or Web of Science for articles that have isolated plasmids from micrococcus, and look at their methods.
About the companies - I use the "Qiaprep spin miniprep kit", from Qiagen for isolating plasmids from vibrios (which are gram-negative) and it works great (though it was designed for E.coli). Roche is also very good but i have never tried it for anything other than coli. other companies of good reputation which probably have kits are Sigma and Promega. All these companies have technical assitance departments about their products and you can ask them about gram plus. usually its best to find their representatives in your own country and work through them.
If you got many strains to test i'd recommend Eckhardt lysis in contrast to a fully blown plasmid extraction.
Especially cause it's cheaper 
It could a very difficult job. If you think that an interesting gene may be encode by the plasmid, it may be worth time to try different methods. In your case, you do not know the size of a plasmid, some bacteria have real big plasmid (>100kb). Most of the methods are not good for that.
One sugestion is using tranditional method and then try to further isolate plasmid from a crude DNA preparation.