Patent ID: 7547531

Claim:
A method for producing an L-amino acid, comprising cultivating an Escherichia coli in a medium, and collecting said L-amino acid from the medium, wherein the fimH gene of said Escherichia coli has been inactivated by a method selected from the group consisting of A) deleting the fimH gene, B) modifying a promoter or a Shine-Dalgarno sequence of-the fimH gene, C) introducing a missense mutation into the fimH gene, D) introducing a nonsense mutation into the fimH gene, and E) introducing a frame shift mutation into the fimH gene and wherein said fimH gene is selected from the group consisting of: (a) a DNA comprising the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:1, and (b) a DNA that is able to hybridize with the complementary strand of the nucleotide of SEQ ID NO:1 under conditions comprising washing at 60° C. and at a salt concentration corresponding to 1×SSC, 0.1 ×SDS, and wherein the DNA encodes fimH.