Bacterial flavohaemoglobins: a consensus sequence and identification of a discrete enterobacterial group and of further bacterial globins

The amino acid sequences of haemoglobin-like proteins from the bacteria Alcaligenes eutrophus , Bacillus subtilis , Erwinia chrysanthemi , Escherichia coli , Vibrio parahaemolyticus , Vitreoscilla sp. and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae were studied. Phylogenies based on distance and parsimony analysis showed that the eubacterial group can be easily distinguished from the other haemoglobin-like proteins. The construction of a consensus bacterial flavohaemoglobin based on the alignment of six bacterial and one yeast globins allowed the design of consensus primers to search for haemoglobin-like genes in other bacteria. PCR products of the expected size were found in Campylobacter jejuni , Salmonella typhimurium , Listeria monocytogenes , Rhizobium leguminosarum , Klebsiella pneumoniae , Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus .