An avian tumor virus promoter directs expression of plasmid genes in Escherichia coli.

A sequence in the long terminal repeat (LTR) of avian tumor virus (ATV) DNA was shown to contain a promoter acute in Escherichia coli. For this analysis the bacterial promoters for the tetracycline (Tc) and neomycin (Nm) resistance genes were deleted from different plasmids and replaced with various fragments derived from the ATV DNA. Expression of the drug-resistant phenotype in the recombinant plasmids at levels comparable to or greater than those found with parental bacterial promotes was shown to be dependent on the presence of an intact sequence ranging from nucleotide +19 to -23 (relative to the cap site) in the ATV DNA. Comparison of the consensus bacterial promoter with the nucleotide sequence in this region revealed strong similarities.