GENOMIC ORGANIZATION OF THE BIOTIN BIOSYNTHETIC GENES OF CORYNEFORM BACTERIA - CLONING AND SEQUENCING OF THE BIOA-BIOD GENES FROM BREVIBACTERIUM-FLAVUM

Three coryneform bacteria, Brevibacterium flavum, Brevibacterium lactofermentum and Corynebacterium glutamicum have been shown to be able to convert 7-keto-8-aminopelargonic acid to biotin through a biotin synthetic pathway identical to that from Escherichia coli (Hatakeyama et al., DNA Sequence, in press, 1993). We report in this paper the cloning and sequencing of the biotin biosynthetic genes encoding the 7,8-diaminopelargonic acid aminotransferase (bioA) and the dethiobiotin synthetase (bioD) of B. flavum MJ233, by complementation of E. coli bioA and bioD mutants. Both bioA and bioD genes from B. flavum were located on a 4.0-kb San DNA fragment. Nucleotide sequence analysis of this fragment revealed that these genes consist of a 1272 bp and a 675 bp open reading frame, respectively. The deduced amino acid sequence of the 7,8-diaminopelargonic acid aminotransferase (BioA) is 51.3% and 31.9% identical to that of the E. coli and Bacillus spaericos bioA gene products, respectively. The deduced amino acid sequence of the dethiobiotin synthetase (BioD) is 25.9% and 32.7% identical to that of the E. coli and B. sphaericus bioD gene products, respectively. In addition, the genomic organization of the bioA, bioB and bioD genes in B. flavum has been shown to be different from that in E. coli and B. sphaericus.