No abstract

SUMMARYThe physiological functions of the Escherichia coli fumarases A, B, and C (FUMA, B and C) were investigated using strains containing multicopy plasmids expressing each of the fum genes, and with single-copy fum-lacZ fusions. The results showed that FUMA is the citric acid cycle enzyme because it was strongly expressed under aerobic conditions but repressed by glucose and anaerobiosis. FUMB and FUMC were less susceptible to repression by glucose and anaerobiosis, and FUMB was identified as an anaerobic enzyme because its anaerobic expression was controlled by the anaerobic transcriptional activator, FNR. The expression of an aspA-lacZ fusion was also shown to be fnr-dependent.

In an attempt to unify the genetic and biological research on Mycobacterium leprae, the aetiological agent of leprosy, a cosmid library was constructed and then ordered by a combination of fingerprinting and hybridization techniques. The genome of M. leprae is represented by four contigs of overlapping clones which, together, account for nearly 2.8Mb of DNA. Several arguments suggest that the gaps between the contigs are small in size and that virtually complete coverage of the chromosome has been obtained. All of the cloned M. leprae genes have been positioned on the contig maps together with the 29 copies of the dispersed repetitive element, RLEP. These have been classified into four groups on the basis of differences in their organization. Several key housekeeping genes were identified and mapped by hybridization with heterologous probes, and the current genome map of this uncultivable pathogen comprises 72 loci.