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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 1999, p. 117-125, Vol. 65, No. 1
Department of Genetics, University of
Valencia, 46100 Burjassot, Valencia, Spain
Received 20 July 1998/Accepted 9 October 1998
Buchnera aphidicola is an obligate
intracellular symbiont of aphids. One of its proposed functions is the
synthesis of essential amino acids, nutrients required by aphids but
deficient in their diet of plant phloem sap. The genetic organization
of the tryptophan pathway in Buchnera from proliferous
aphids of the family Aphididae has previously been shown to reflect a
capacity to overproduce this essential amino acid (C.-Y. Lai, L. Baumann, and P. Baumann, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91:3819-3823,
1994). This involved amplification of the genes for the first enzyme in
the pathway, anthranilate synthase (TrpEG), on a low-copy-number
plasmid. Here we report on the finding and molecular characterization
of TrpEG-encoding plasmids in Buchnera from aphids of the
distantly related family Pemphigidae. Buchnera from
Tetraneura caerulescens contained a 3.0-kb plasmid (pBTc2)
that carried a single copy of trpEG and resembled
trpEG plasmids of Buchnera from the Aphididae.
The second plasmid (pBPs2), isolated from Buchnera of
Pemphigus spyrothecae, contained a different replicon. It
consisted of a putative origin of replication containing iterons and an
open reading frame, designated repAC, which showed a high
similarity to the gene encoding the replication initiation protein RepA
of the RepA/C replicon from the broad-host-range IncA/C group of
plasmids. The plasmid population was heterogeneous with respect to the
number of tandem repeats of a 1.8-kb unit carrying
repAC1, trpG, and remnants
of trpE. The two principal forms consisted of either five
or six copies of this repeat and a single-copy region carrying
repAC2, the putative origin of replication, and
trpE. The unexpected finding of elements of the RepA/C
replicon in previously characterized trpEG plasmids from
Buchnera of the Aphididae suggests that a replacement of replicons has occurred during the evolution of these plasmids, which
may point to a common ancestry for all Buchnera trpEG amplifications.
0099-2240/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Plasmid-Encoded Anthranilate Synthase (TrpEG) in
Buchnera aphidicola from Aphids of the
Family Pemphigidae
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Genetics, University of Valencia, c/Dr. Moliner 50, 46100 Burjassot, Valencia, Spain. Phone: 34-96-3864505. Fax: 34-96-3983029. E-mail: amparo.latorre{at}uv.es.
Present address: Department of Biology, University of York, York,
YO10 5YW, United Kingdom.
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 1999, p. 117-125, Vol. 65, No. 1
0099-2240/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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