Evidence for two types of subunits in the bacterioferritin of Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum
Abstract
In order to investigate the role of bacterioferritin (Bfr) in the biomineralization of magnetite by microorganisms, we have cloned and sequenced the bfr genes from M. magnetotacticum. The organism has two bfr genes that overlap by one nucleotide. Both encode putative protein products of 18 kDa, the expected size for Bfr subunits, and show a strong similarity to other Bfr subunit proteins. By scanning the DNA sequence databases, we found that a limited number of other organisms, including N. gonorrhea, P. aeruginosa, and Synechocystis PCC6803, also have two bfr genes. When the sequences of a number of microbial Bfrs are compared with each other, they fall into two distinct types with the organisms mentioned above having one of each type. Differences in heme- and metal-binding sites and ferroxidase activities of the two types of subunits are discussed.
Additional Information
© 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. Received 7 May 1997; accepted 3 July 1997; Received by Received by A.M. Campbell. We would like to thank David Mathog of the Sequence Analysis Facility for help with the molecular modelling. This work was supported by grant ES06652 from the National Institutes of Health and by a grant from the Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 36566
- DOI
- 10.1016/S0378-1119(97)00424-1
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130124-105456864
- ES06652
- NIH
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program
- Created
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2013-01-24Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field