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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2005, p. 6538-6544, Vol. 71, No. 11
0099-2240/05/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.71.11.6538-6544.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Novel 4-Chlorophenol Degradation Gene Cluster and Degradation Route via Hydroxyquinol in Arthrobacter chlorophenolicus A6

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden,¹ Section for Natural Sciences, Södertörn University College, 141 89 Huddinge, Sweden,² Department of Microbiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 7025, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden³

Received 8 December 2004/ Accepted 13 June 2005

Arthrobacter chlorophenolicus A6, a previously described 4-chlorophenol-degrading strain, was found to degrade 4-chlorophenol via hydroxyquinol, which is a novel route for aerobic microbial degradation of this compound. In addition, 10 open reading frames exhibiting sequence similarity to genes encoding enzymes involved in chlorophenol degradation were cloned and designated part of a chlorophenol degradation gene cluster (cph genes). Several of the open reading frames appeared to encode enzymes with similar functions; these open reading frames included two genes, cphA-I and cphA-II, which were shown to encode functional hydroxyquinol 1,2-dioxygenases. Disruption of the cphA-I gene yielded a mutant that exhibited negligible growth on 4-chlorophenol, thereby linking the cph gene cluster to functional catabolism of 4-chlorophenol in A. chlorophenolicus A6. The presence of a resolvase pseudogene in the cph gene cluster together with analyses of the G+C content and codon bias of flanking genes suggested that horizontal gene transfer was involved in assembly of the gene cluster during evolution of the ability of the strain to grow on 4-chlorophenol.

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