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Journal of Bacteriology, December 2000, p. 6577-6583, Vol. 182, No. 23
Department of Microbiology, Eastman Dental
Institute for Oral Health Care Sciences, University College London,
London WC1X 8LD, United Kingdom
Received 5 June 2000/Accepted 5 September 2000
Tn5397 is a novel conjugative transposon, originally
isolated from Clostridium difficile. This element can
transfer between C. difficile strains and to and from
Bacillus subtilis. It encodes a conjugation system that is
very similar to that of Tn916. However, insertion and
excision of Tn5397 appears to be dependent on the product
of the element encoded gene tndX, a member of the large resolvase family of site-specific recombinases. To test the role of
tndX, the gene was cloned and the protein was expressed in Escherichia coli. The ability of TndX to catalyze the
insertion and excision of derivatives (minitransposons) of
Tn5397 representing the putative circular and integrated
forms, respectively, was investigated. TndX was required for both
insertion and excision. Mutagenesis studies showed that some of the
highly conserved amino acids at the N-terminal resolvase domain and the
C-terminal nonconserved region of TndX are essential for activity.
Analysis of the target site choices showed that the cloned
Tn5397 targets from C. difficile and B. subtilis were still hot spots for the minitransposon insertion in
E. coli.
0021-9193/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
The Large Resolvase TndX Is Required and Sufficient
for Integration and Excision of Derivatives of the Novel
Conjugative Transposon Tn5397
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology, Eastman Dental Institute for Oral Health Care Sciences, University College London, 256 Gray's Inn Rd., London WC1X 8LD, United
Kingdom. Phone: 44 (0)20 7915 1223. Fax: 44 (0)20 7915 1127. E-mail:
p.mullany{at}eastman.ucl.ac.uk.
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