CORP Author |
Illinois Univ. at Urbana-Champaign. Dept. of Microbiology. ;Ohio State Univ., Columbus.;Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, OH. Risk Reduction Engineering Lab.;Department of Energy, Washington, DC.;National Science Foundation, Washington, DC. |
Abstract |
The DNA sequences of a region that includes the hisA gene of two related methanogenic archaebacteria, Methanococcus voltae and Methanococcus vannielii, have been compared. Both organisms show a similar genome organization in this region, displaying three open reading frames (ORFs) separated by regions of very high A+T content. Two of the ORFs, including ORFHisA, show significant DNA sequence homology. As might be expected for organisms having a genome that is A+T-rich, there is a high preference for A and U as the third base in codons. Although the regions upstream of the structural genes contain prokaryotic-like promoter sequences, it is not known whether they are recognized as promoters in these archaebacterial cells. A ribosome binding site, G-G-T-G, is located 6 base pairs preceding the ATG translation initiation sequence of both hisA genes. The sequences upstream of the two hisA genes show only limited sequence homology. The M. voltae intergenic region contains four tandemly arranged repetitions of an 11-base-pair sequence, whereas the M. vanielii sequence contains both direct and inverted repetition sequences. |