The atrazine catabolism genes atzABC are widespread and highly conserved

Pseudormonas strain ADP metabolizes the herbicide atrazine via three enzymatic steps, encoded by the genes atzABC, to yield cyanuric acid, a nitrogen source for many bacteria. Here, we show that five geographically distinct atrazine-degrading bacteria contain genes homologous to atzA, -B, and -C. The sequence identities of the atz genes from different atrazine-degrading bacteria were greater than 99% in all pairwise comparisons. This differs from bacterial genes involved in the catabolism of other chlorinated compounds, for which the average sequence identity in pairwise comparisons of the known members of a class ranged from 25 to 56%. Our results indicate that globally distributed atrazine-catabolic genes are highly conserved in diverse genera of bacteria.