Kd. Everiss et al., THE ACCESSORY COLONIZATION FACTOR AND TOXIN-COREGULATED PILUS GENE CLUSTERS ARE PHYSICALLY LINKED ON THE VIBRIO-CHOLERAE-0395 CHROMOSOME, DNA sequence, 5(1), 1994, pp. 51-55
A partial nucleotide sequence of the first gene in the Vibrio cholerae
accessory colonization factor gene cluster was obtained by sequencing
a cloned acfB::TnphoA fusion junction. Analysis of the sequence data
revealed that the ATC start codon of the acfB structural gene is locat
ed 6 bp downstream of the tcpJ TCA stop codon. This establishes a larg
e region in excess of 20 kbp of the Vibrio cholerae chromosome as a cl
uster of coordinately regulated virulence genes involved in intestinal
colonization. The absence of a characteristic transcription terminati
on site in the tcpJ-acfB intergenic region indicates that acfB may be
encoded on the same messenger RNA as tcpJ. The deduced amino acid sequ
ence for the N-terminal 143 amino acids of AcfB reveals a po- tential
leader peptide, that lacks a consensus signal peptidase I recognition
sequence. Computer algorithms fail to detect any significant similarit
ies between the partial AcfB amino acid sequence and any entries in th
e SWISS-PROT database.