title: Identification of the region required for monomerization of the rolling circle plasmid pKYM.
abstract: Plasmid pKYM, isolated from the gram-negative bacterium Shigella sonnei, is a small multicopy plasmid which replicates by a rolling circle mechanism. The formation of multimers has been observed in a derivative of pKYM which lost a part of the origin region, and the loss of the monomerization mechanism would have led to these multimers. By analyzing the constructs of several mutants, we discovered that a DNA region required for monomerization was present upstream of the RepK binding site in the replication origin. As either of the T-rich sequence or the inverted repeat sequences which were seen in that region have been lost in the multimer-forming plasmids, these sequences may be necessary for monomerization.
authors.affiliation: Division of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kanazawa University, Japan.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yasukawa
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Viller
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Masamune
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004261:DNA Replication; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics*; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation; D010957:Plasmids / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012764:Shigella sonnei / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial