Purification and characterization of the sopB gene product which is responsible for stable maintenance of mini-F plasmid.

The mini-F plasmid has the trans-acting sopA, sopB genes and the cis-acting sopC DNA which are essential for plasmid partitioning. In this paper, we report the purification of the sopB gene product from extracts of cells harboring a pBR322 derivative carrying the sopB gene. The purity of the final preparation was more than 95%, as determined by densitometry. The amino acid sequence of the amino-terminal region of the protein for the 17 residues identified was identical to that predicted from the DNA sequence of the sopB gene. Therefore, it was concluded that the protein was the sopB gene product. Using anti-SopB serum, the SopB protein was detected in the cell lysates of F+, F', and Hfr strains. The SopB protein bound to the plasmid DNA of a pBR322 derivative carrying the sopC DNA segment, but not to the vector plasmid pBR322.