Two self-splicing group I introns interrupt two late transcribed genes of prolate-headed Lactobacillus delbrueckii phage JCL1032

Summary.

Two group I introns were detected from the late gene region of the prolate-headed phage JCL1032 of Lactobacillus delbrueckii. Introns JCL-I1 and JCL-I2 interrupt orf602 and orf1868 encoding a phage terminase large subunit (TerL, 69.7 kDa) and a putative tape measure protein (TMP, 202 kDa), respectively. The introns JCL-I1 (226 bp) and JCL-I2 (322 bp) were efficiently self-spliced in vivo. Both introns were classified to the subgroup IA1 having all the conserved structures necessary for splicing, but lacking the ability to encode endonucleases or other gene products. The introns JCL-I1 and JCL-I2 shared restricted nucleotide sequence similarity with each other and with the group I terL intron of Lb. delbrueckii phage LL-H. No match was found for JCL-I1 in the homology searches. Instead, the primary sequence from the joining region of P8 and P7 to P9 of the intron JCL-I2 was homologous to the group I intron of Bacillus mojavensis; the orf142 introns I1, I2 and I3 of Staphylococcus aureus phage Twort; the group I intron of phage Bastille (Bacillus thuringiensis); and to the group IA3 intron of Monomastix species.