A 3.6-kb DNA fragment from Bacillus subtilis was found to complement t
he K+ uptake-deficient Escherichia coli strain TK2420. Transformation
with a pKLO61 plasmid harboring this fragment conferred the capacity t
o grow on a minimal medium containing only 10 mM K+. Insertional mutag
enesis and subcloning identified a single gene responsible for the com
plementation. This gene coded for an apparent homolog of E. coli TrkA.
Sequence analysis of the cloned region also revealed three additional
open reading frames. These included: a gene encoding a homolog to the
czcD gene product of Alcaligenes eutrophus, a lysR-type regulatory ge
ne which was found to enhance Na+ resistance in E. coli NM81 (Delta nh
aA) in a separate complementation test, and an orfD with no significan
t similarity to sequences deposited in Genbank.