Expression of a Streptomyces plasmid promoter in Escherichia coli

A 166-bp DNA fragment from the Streptomyces multicopy plasmid pIJ101 with in vivo promoter activity both in Streptomyces lividans and in Escherichia coli was isolated. The start point of the RNA transcribed from this fragment, determined by high resolution S1 nuclease mapping, was the same in S. lividans and in E. coli. This suggests that the E. coli RNA polymerase recognizes the same sequence determinants and chooses the point of initiation of RNA synthesis in the same way as the corresponding S. lividans enzyme. The putative promoter sequence shows good homology to the E. coli promoter consensus sequence in the '-35' region but poor homology in the '-10' region.     

油菜叶绿体16S rRNA基因前导顺序的一级结构

质粒pBN119的3.2kb BamHI片段的PvuⅡ-BglⅡ片段全顺序长为840bp,其中含油菜叶绿体16S rRNA基因5′端的140bp。通过寻找GTTC顺序,发现在395至468位核苷酸之间是tRNA~(Val)基因;在73至118位核苷酸之间是一个蛋白阅读框。和已发表的玉米叶绿体16S rRNA前导顺序进行比较,同样存在三个相应的大肠杆菌RNA聚合酶的结合位点。和大肠杆菌的启动子及相应基因作比较,表明叶绿体基因组具有很明显的原核性,但其tRNA~(Val)基因没有CCA3′顺序。在16S rRNA基因、tRNA~(Val)基因及蛋白阅读框的5′端附近均能找到一个比较稳定的茎环结构。我们推测这些茎环结构可能和位于反问重复顺序上的某些基因的转录调节有关。     

Analysis of base-pairing potentials between 16S rRNA and 5' UTR for translation initiation in various prokaryotes.

MOTIVATION: It is well accepted that the 3' end of 16S rRNA is directly involved in prokaryotic translation initiation by pairing with the Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence, which is located in the ribosome-binding site of mRNA. According to Shine and Dalgarno, Escherichia coli 's 5' UTR has the pattern of 'AGGAGG' (SD sequence), which is complementary to the 3' end sequence of 16S rRNA. In this work, we systematically calculated free-energy values of the base pairing between the 3' end of 16S rRNA and the 5' UTR of mRNA, in order to analyze the base-pairing potentials in various prokaryotes. The free-energy values were then plotted over distances from the start codon to visualize the free-energy pattern of 5'UTRs. RESULTS: The average free-energy values fell sharply before the start codon in E. coli, which is consistent with the model that the 3' end of 16S rRNA base pairs with the SD sequence. Haemophilus influenzae, Bacillus subtilis and Helicobacter pylori show a similar pattern, suggesting that the organisms have basically the same mechanism of translation initiation as E. coli. Other eubacteria, such as Synechocystis PCC6803, Mycoplasma genitalium, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Borrelia burgdorferi also show decreases in their free-energy values, although they are less evident. We also did the same analysis with a eukaryote genome as a control; no fall in free-energy values was observed between the 3' end of 18S rRNA and 5' UTRs of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, suggesting that this organism does not base pair in translation initiation. The three archaebacteria A. fulgidus, M. jannaschii and M. thermoautotrophicum show patterns similar to eubacteria, but not to S. cerevisiae, indicating that archaebacteria are closer to eubacteria than to eukaryotes with respect to the mechanism of translation initiation. From these observations, it appears that the shape of the curve produced by the algorithm can be used to predict the mechanism of translation initiation. AVAILABILITY: The C programs used in our analysis are available upon request.