Abstract
dTDP-l-Rhamnose biosynthetic gene cluster was cloned from Thermus caldophilus. A cluster of four open reading frames, strmlA, B, C and D, responsible for the production of dTDP-l-rhmanose, was screened from the genomic library. Thermophilic glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferase, encoding 356 amino acids with a calculated molecular weight 38 kDa, was expressed under the control of the tac promoter in E. coli. The expressed enzyme, stRmlA is thermostable up to 70 °C and apparently retained its activity even up to 90 °C. It shares 73% sequence identity to glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferase from Streptomyces argillaceus. Amino acid sequence comparison of stRmlA with ten glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferases indicated higher number of unusual hydrophobic residues (A10, A58, A69, A252, V225, V257, V265, I242 and I246) and charged residues (D43, D160, D248, D249, D315, H124, H201, H283 and H354) in stRmlA.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Blankenfeldt W, Asunction M, Lam JS, Naismith JH (2000) The structural basis of the catalytic mechanism and regulation of glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferase (RmlA). EMBO J. 19: 6652–6663.
Bradford MM (1976) A rapid and sensitive method for the quantitation of microgram quantities of protein utilizing the principle of protein-dye binding. Anal. Biochem. 72: 248–254.
Chakravarty S, Varadarajan R (2000) Elucidation of determinants of protein stability through genome sequence analysis. FEBS Lett. 470: 65–69.
Giraud MF, Naismith JH (2000) The rhamnose pathway. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 10: 687–696.
Gregory AC, Singer, Donal A, Hickey (2003) Thermophilic prokaryotes have characteristic patterns of codon usage, amino acid composition and nucleotide content. Gene 23: 39–47.
Gromiha MM, Oobatake M, Sarai A (1999) Important amino acid properties for enhanced thermostability from mesophilic to thermophilic proteins. Biophys. Chem. 82: 51–67.
Haney P, Konisky J, Koretke KK, Luthey-Schulten Z, Wolynes PG (1997) Structural basis for thermostability and identification of potential active site residues for adenylate kinases from the archaeal genus Methanococcus. Protein Eng. 28: 117–130.
Kim YS, Lee DS, Kwon ST (2002) Cloning and expression of the gene for inorganic pyrophosphatase of Thermus caldophilus GK24 and properties of the enzyme. J. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 12: 301–305.
Koh S, Kim J, Shin HJ, Lee DH, Bae J, Kim D, Lee DS (2003) Mechanistic study of the intramolecular conversion of maltose to trehalose by Thermus caldophilus GK24 trehalose synthase. Carbohyd. Res. 338: 1339–1343.
Kumar S, Tsai CJ, Nussinov R (2000) Factors enhancing protein stability. Protein Eng. 13: 179–191.
Lennart L, Kaiser R, Reeves PR, Lindberg AA (1994) Purification, characterization and high performance liquid chromatography assay of salmonella glucose-1-phosphate cytidylyltransferase from the cloned rfbF gene. J. Biol. Chem. 269: 122–126.
Li Q, Hobbs M, Reeves PR (2003) The variation of dTDP-L-rhamnose pathway genes in Vibrio cholerae. Microbiology 149: 2463–2474.
Ma Y, Mills JA, Belisle JT, Vissa V, Howell M, Bowlin K, Scherman MS, McNeil M (1997) Determination of the pathway for rhamnose biosynthesis in mycobacteria: cloning, sequencing and expression of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis gene encoding ?-D-glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferase. Microbiology 143: 937–945.
Marolda CL, Valvano MA (1995) Genetic analysis of the dTDP-rhamnose biosynthesis region of the Escherichia coli VW187 (O7:K1) rfb gene cluster: identification of functional homologs of rfbB and rfbA in the rff cluster and correct location of the rffE gene. J. Bacteriol. 177: 5539–5546.
Querol E, Perez-Pons JA, Mozo-Villarias A (1996) Analysis of protein conformational characteristics related to thermostability. Protein Eng. 9: 265–271.
Russell RJ, Ferguson JM, Hough DW, Danson MJ, Taylor GL (1997) The crystal structure of citrate synthase from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus at 1.9 A resolution. Biochemistry 36: 9983–9994.
Sambrook J, Russell DW (2001) Molecular Cloning, 3rd edn. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
Taguchi H, Yamashita H, Matsuzawa, Ohta T (1982) Heat stable and fructose-1,6-bisphosphate-activated L-lactate dehydrogenase from an extremely thermophilic bacterium. J. Biochem. 91: 1343–1348.
Thompson JD, Gibson TJ, Plewniak F, Jeanmougin F, Higgins DG (1997) The ClustalX windows interface: flexible strategies for multiple sequence alignment aided by quality analysis tools. Nucl. Acids Res. 24: 4876–4882.
Weber K, Pringle JR, Osborn M (1971) Measurement of molecular weights by electrophoresis on SDS-polyacrylamide gel. Meth. Enzymol. 26: 3–27.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Parajuli, N., Lee, DS., Lee, H.C. et al. Cloning, expression and characterization of glucose-1-phosphate thymidylyltransferase (strmlA) from Thermus caldophilus . Biotechnology Letters 26, 437–442 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:BILE.0000018264.35237.86
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:BILE.0000018264.35237.86