Cloning and expression of the staphylokinase gene of Staphylococcus aureus in Escherichia coli.

Restriction fragments of DNA from bacteriophage S phi-C of Staphylococcus aureus which carries the gene for staphylokinase, one of the plasminogen activators, were cloned onto plasmid pBR322. Recombinant plasmids carrying the 2.5 kilobase pair segment of S phi-C DNA confer on Escherichia coli cells the capacity to synthesize staphylokinase. The enzyme is synthesized in amounts comparable to that found in S. aureus, and irrespective of the orientation of cloned fragments and their insertion site on pBR322. The active enzyme produced by E. coli cells is preferentially recovered from the periplasmic space and in part excreted into the culture medium. It is indistinguishable from the enzyme produced by S. aureus in molecular weight, as determined by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and in antigenicity, as determined by the micro-Ouchterlony precipitation test.