CLONING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE HEMOLYSIN DETERMINANTS FROM AEROMONAS-HYDROPHILA

Two haemolysin genes (AHH-1 and AHH-2) of Aeromonas hydrophila ATCC7966 were cloned into a plasmid vector in Escherichia coli K-12. An open reading frame (ORF) of the AHH-1 haemolysin gene was 1734 base pairs (bp), and corresponded to a protein of 577 amino acid residues. Analysis of the deduced amino sequence indicated a highly hydrophobic N-terminal region which had the characteristics of a leader peptide. The sequence also included the -10 region and the -35 region of a promoter, and a ribosome-binding site upstream from the ORF. The termination site was located downstream from the ORF. The haemolysin was a thermolabile protein with the predicted molecular mass of 60 kDa. The AHH-1 gene is distributed in various A. hydrophila and A. salmonicida strains. The nucleotide sequence of a 981 bp ORF of the AHH-2 gene was encoded with the predicted molecular mass of 37.7 kDa polypeptides. The homology of the nucleotide sequence was very low between the AHH-1 and AHH-2 genes, and also with the aerolysin gene cloned by Howard & Buckley (1986). No leader peptide was found in the N-terminal region of the ORF of the AHH-2 gene. The AHH-2 gene was detected in the original strain ATCC7966, but was not detected in other tested strains of A. hydrophila and A. salmonicida.