Bacterial artificial chromosome

A Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (or BAC) is a vector, based on a fertility plasmid, used for cloning in bacteria, usually E. coli. Its usual insert size is 150 kbp, with a range from 100 to 300 kbp.

BACs are often used in sequencing other organisms, in genome projects[?], for example the Human Genome Project. A short piece of the organisms DNA is amplified as an insert in BACs, then sequenced. Finally, the sequenced parts are rearranged in silico[?], resulting in the genome sequence of the sequenced organism.