Premium
Structural and functional diversity among bacterial interspersed mosaic elements (BIMEs)
Author(s) -
Bachellier Sophie,
Saurin William,
Perrin David,
Hofnung Maurice,
Gilson Eric
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
molecular microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.857
H-Index - 247
eISSN - 1365-2958
pISSN - 0950-382X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2958.1994.tb00995.x
Subject(s) - biology , palindrome , dna gyrase , genetics , genome , dna , bacterial genome size , escherichia coli , nucleotide , repeated sequence , sequence motif , palindromic sequence , conserved sequence , consensus sequence , structural motif , computational biology , gene , base sequence , biochemistry
Summary Palindromic units (PU or REP) were defined as 40‐nucleotide DNA sequences which are highly repeated in the genome of several members of the Enterobacteriaceae. They were shown to be a constituent of the bacterial interspersed mosaic element (BIME), in which they are associated with other repetitive sequences. We report here that Escherichia coli PU sequences contain three motifs (Y, Z 1 and Z 2 ), leading to the definition of two BIME families. The BIME‐1 family, highly conserved over 145 nucleotides, contains two PUs (motifs Y and Z 1 ). The BIME‐2 family contains a variable number of PUs (motifs Y and Z 2 ). We present evidence, using band shift experiments, that each PU motif binds DNA gyrase with a different affinity. This suggests that the two families are functionally distinct.