Structure of a region in the genome of bacteriophage N15, necessary for formation of hairpins at ends of the linear plasmid prophage]

A fragment containing telRL site of bacteriophage N15 has been cloned in the vector plasmid pUC19. The nucleotide sequence of a small region from EcoRV-PstI fragment has been defined by Maxam-Gilbert technique. The analysis of the obtained sequence has shown the telRL site to be a nonideal palindrome (the size of 56 nucleotide ops) in which two nucleotide pairs differ in the positions 12 and 14 on both sides of the palindrome centre. The DNA region with alteration of purines and pyrimidines (GC) surrounded by AT-rich regions: 5'-ATTATACGCGCGTATAAT-3'--in the symmetry centre of palindrome is characteristic of the telRL site structure. This characteristic of the region may play a key role in recognition of the site by the specific enzyme at formation of linear prophage-plasmid during lysogenization.