MOLECULAR-CLONING AND SEQUENCING OF THE EXTRACELLULAR PECTATE LYASE-II GENE FROM ERWINIA-CAROTOVORA ER

Erwinia carotovora Er produces three extra-cellular pectate lyases (PL I, II, and III). The gene for pectate lyase II (pelII) of E. carotovora Er was cloned and expressed both in Escherichia coli and E. carotovora Er. Localization experiments in E. coli showed that PL II was exclusively in the cytoplasmic space, while PL II was excreted into the culture medium. The complete nucleotides of the pelII gene were sequenced and found to include one open reading frame of 1122bp coding for a protein of 374 amino acid residues. From comparison of the N-terminal amino acid sequence between the purified PL II and the deduced protein from the nucleotide sequence we reached the conclusion that the mature protein is composed of 352 amino acids with a calculated molecular weight of 38,169 and is preceded by a typical signal sequence of 22 amino acid residues. PL II had 90.1 % and 82.9% homologies with PL I and PL III in amino acid sequence, respectively.