THE STRUCTURE OF A PLASMID OF CHLAMYDIA-TRACHOMATIS BELIEVED TO BE REQUIRED FOR GROWTH WITHIN MAMMALIAN-CELLS

Sequence analysis of a 7.5 kb DNA plasmid isolated from Chlamydia trachomatis shows 8 open reading frames (ORFs) regularly spaced along most of the sequence. One of these ORFs encodes a 451-amino acid polypeptide highly homologous to the DnaB protein of Escherichia coli. A region between ORFs 6 and 7 contains a cluster of alternating ATs and a 22 bp sequence tandemly repeated 4 times, suggesting a replication control region. Several ORFs correspond to plasmid-specific polypeptides that have been described. Codons ending with A or T are more frequent, as might be expected from the high A/T content (64%) of the plasmid, and codon usage is similar to that of the C. trachomatis chromosomal gene, omp1L2.