FIG. 2.

Analysis of the ORFs surrounding the B. cepacia RR10 alkane hydroxylase gene. The 6,237-bp B. cepacia DNA region sequenced was analyzed for the presence of ORFs homologous to described genes of known function at the website services of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) and of the European Bioinformatics Institute (http://www2.ebi.ac.uk) using the program BLASTX (19). The 1,158-bp ORF coding for a polypeptide showing high similarity scores to known or predicted alkane hydroxylases was named alkB (see the text). A polypeptide showing 30% identity to the Methanococcus jannaschii hypothetical protein MJ1207, which belongs to the acetyltransferase family of proteins, was found upstream of alkB; it is indicated as orf1. Downstream of orf1, an ORF was present encoding a protein 43% identical to E. coli MinC, followed by part of another ORF coding for a polypeptide homologous to E. coli MinD (80% identity in the region analyzed, which covers just the 112 N-terminal residues). E. coli MinC and MinD are known to play an important role in the process of cell division (reviewed in reference 31). Downstream of alkB and oriented in the opposite direction, an ORF was present encoding a protein 61% identical to the E. coli seryl-tRNA synthetase (serS gene). Upstream from serS and in the same orientation, there is an ORF coding for a polypeptide homologous to part of an E. coli hypothetical protein named YcaJ (84% identity in the region analyzed, which covers only the C-terminal half of the protein), the gene of which is also located upstream of serS in E. coli. It is indicated as orf2. The nucleotide sequence of the analyzed segment was deposited at the EMBL data bank under accession no. AJ293306.