MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF THE GENE ENCODING A PROTEIN-COMPONENT OF THE EIKENELLA-CORRODENS ADHESIN COMPLEX THAT IS CLOSE TO THE CARBOHYDRATE-RECOGNITION DOMAIN

A monoclonal antibody against a lectin-like substance (LS) of Eikenell a corrodens (Ec) was used for screening the Ec DNA library. Three posi tive clones that carried an identical 12-kb segment were obtained. A 2 5-kDa protein, which specifically binds to the antibody, was overprodu ced in all of the Escherichia coli clones. Deletion analysis showed th at the gene encoding the 25-kDa protein was located within a 1.2-kb se gment. The nucleotide (nt) sequence of this segment contained an open reading frame encoding a protein of 24 600 Da. We purified the 25-KDa protein from the cloned E. coli strain. The sequence of the first 10 a mino acids (aa) from the N-terminus of the purified 25-kDa protein agr eed with that deduced from the nt sequence. Since the monoclonal antib ody used in this study inhibits the physiological activity of EcLS, we concluded that the 25-kDa protein is a component of the adhesin compl ex, which is located near the carbohydrate recognition domain of lecti n in EcLS.