Metabolites such as diaminopimelate and some aromatic derivatives, not synthesized in mammalian cells, are essential for growth of bacteria. As a first step towards the design of a new human live vaccine that uses attenuated strains of Leptospira interrogans, the md, uroD and h p D genes, encoding aspartate P-semialdehyde dehydrogenase, 3-dehydroquinase and tetrahydrodipicolinate N-succinyltransferase, respectively, were cloned by complementation of Escherichia coli mutants. The complete nucleotide sequence of the md gene was determined and found to contain an open reading frame capable of encoding a protein of 349 amino acids with a calculated M, of 38007. Comparison of this deduced L. interrogans aspartate P-semialdehyde dehydrogenase amino acid sequence with those of the same enzyme from Succharomyces cereuisiue and Corynekterium glutmicum revealed 46% and 36% identity, respectively. By contrast, the identity between the L. interrogans enzyme and the Streptococcus mutans or E coli enzymes was less than 31%. Highly conserved sequences within aspartate semialdehyde dehydrogenase from the five organisms were observed at the amino and carboxyl termini, and around the cysteine of the active site.
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