CLONING AND SEQUENCING OF THE DNAK REGION OF STREPTOMYCES-COELICOLOR A3(2)

The dnaK homologue of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) strain M145 has been cloned and sequenced. Nucleotide sequence analysis of a 2.5-kb region revealed an open reading frame (ORF) encoding a predicted DnaK protein of 618 amino acids (M(r)=66274). The dnaK coding sequence displays extreme codon bias and shows a strong preference for CGY and GGY, for Arg and Gly codons, respectively. The predicted DnaK sequence has a high Lys:Arg ratio which is not typical of streptomycete proteins. The region immediately downstream from dnaK contains an ORF for a GrpE-like protein; the predicted start codon of grpE overlaps the last two codons of dnaK, indicating that the two genes are translationally coupled. This organisation differs from that reported for other prokaryotes.