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J. Bacteriol., 06 1996, 3188-3193, Vol 178, No. 11
IW Nilsen, I Bakke, A Vader, O Olsvik and MR El-Gewely
A novel gene designated cmr, which mapped to 18.8 min of the Escherichia
coli K-12 genome, was shown to mediate resistance to chloramphenicol when
it was expressed from a multicopy vector. The accumulation of
chloramphenicol was significantly less in cells overexpressing cmr than in
control cells harboring the vector without insert. After the addition of a
proton motive force blocker, the level of accumulation of chloramphenicol
in the resistant cells rapidly approached the levels found in sensitive
cells carrying only the chromosomal cmr. Northern (RNA) blot analyses
revealed that the cmr gene is expressed as a 1.3-kb transcript. This size
corresponds very well with a predicted size of 1,293 nucleotides (nt) based
on the mapping of the transcription initiation site to a G residue 24 nt
upstream of the start codon and the presence of a putative rho- independent
terminator sequence ending 36 nt downstream of the 1,233-nt open reading
frame encoding the putative Cmr protein. The 411-residue- long derived
amino acid sequence contains 12 putative transmembrane segments and
displays significant sequence similarities to several known drug resistance
protein sequences of the major facilitator family. We provide evidence
strongly suggesting that the resistance mediated by Cmr involves active
exclusion of chloramphenicol.
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology
Isolation of cmr, a novel Escherichia coli chloramphenicol resistance gene encoding a putative efflux pump
Department of Biotechnology, Institute of Medical Biology, University of Tromso, Norway.
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