Bacterial interspersed mosaic elements (BIMEs) are present in the genome of Klebsiella

Bacterial interspersed mosaic elements (BIMEs) constitute a family of highly repetitive sequences containing palindromic units (PUs), also called repetitive extragenic palindromes (REPs). BIMEs were originally described in Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium. We show here, by determining the nucleotide sequence of two intergenic regions of Klebsiella pneumoniae, by computer searches, and by hybridization, that sequences with similar characteristics are found in the genome of several Klebsiella species. This reinforces the idea that BIMEs play general and important roles in enterobacteria such as in the organization of the bacterial chromosome.