Genes of de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis from the hyperthermoacidophilic crenarchaeote Sulfolobus acidocaldarius:: Novel organization in a bipolar operon

Sequencing a 8,519-bp segment of the Sulfolobus acidocaldarius genome revealed the existence of a tightly packed bipolar pyrimidine gene cluster encoding the enzymes of de novo UMP synthesis. The G+C content of 35.3% is comparable to that of the entire genome, but intergenic regions exhibit a considerably lower percentage of strong base pairs. Coding regions harbor the classical excess of purines on the coding strand, whereas intergenic regions do not show this bias. Reverse transcription-PCR and primer extension experiments demonstrated the existence of two polycistronic messengers, pyrEF-orf8 and pyrBI-orf1-pyrCD-orf2-orf3-orf4, initiated from a pair of divergent and partially overlapping promoters. The gene order and the grouping in two wings of a bipolar operon constitute a novel organization of pyr genes that also occurs in the recently determined genome sequences of Sutfolobus solfataricus P2 and Sulfolobus tokodaii strain 7; the configuration appears therefore characteristic of Sulfolobus. The quasi-leaderless WE and pyrB genes do not bear a Shine-Dalgarno sequence, whereas the initiation codon of promoter-distal genes is preceded at an appropriate distance by a sequence complementary to the 3' end of 16S rRNA. The polycistronic nature of the pyr messengers and the existence of numerous overlaps between contiguous open reading frames suggests the existence of translational coupling. pyrB transcription was shown to be approximately twofold repressed in the presence of uracil. The mechanism underlying this modulation is as yet unknown, but it appears to be of a type different from the various attenuation-like mechanisms that regulate pyrB transcription in bacteria. In contrast, the pyrE-pyrB promoter/control region harbors direct repeats and imperfect palindromes reminiscent of target sites for the binding of a hypothetical regulatory protein(s).