Recent advances in the genetics of the clostridia

Molecular characterization of the 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PD) operon of Clostridium butyricum

“…A putative ribosomebinding site GAGAAG is located 7 bp upstream of the dhaT ATG initiation codon. Its sequence and location matched well those found for other clostridial genes (21). Immediately downstream of the dhaT TAA stop codon, a 22-bp inverted repeat sequence, able to form a stable stem-loop structure (⌬G ϭ Ϫ25 kcal͞mol), was identified.…”

Molecular analysis of the mannitol operon of Clostridium acetobutylicum encoding a phosphotransferase system and a putative PTS-modulated regulator

“…6). The corresponding promoter sequence (5h-TTGAAA-17 bp-TATCAT) showed reasonable homology to the consensus suggested for Gram-positive bacteria and clostridia (Graves & Rabinowitz, 1986 ;Young et al, 1989) and partially overlapped the CRE2 DNA sequence found in this position (Fig. 6).…”

“…A further ORF, designated orfP and truncated at its 5h end, was identified 260 bp upstream of these genes. Putative ribosome-binding sites with reasonable homology to others found in clostridia (Young et al, 1989) could be identified upstream of all complete ORFs, although the site upstream of mtlR (5h-GGTGAG) was somewhat unusual. A search for secondary structures at the mRNA level resulted in the detection of several hairpin-loops with free energy values ranging between k26 and k96 kJ mol −" [calculated with the computer program FoldRNA (Zuker, 1989) according to the determination of Freier et al (1986)].…”

Molecular characterization of two forms of nontoxic‐nonhemagglutinin components of Clostridium botulinum type A progenitor toxins

“…The pAHR3 was designed with the N-terminal protein sequence data of HA-35. Nucleotides in the positions of codon degeneracy were chosen on the basis of those most commonly found in clostridial genes [11]. pAR3 was designed with the nucleotide sequence of the 5'-end of the type A neurotoxin gene [12,13].…”