Construction in vitro of a cloned nar operon from Escherichia coli.

To clone the nar operon of Escherichia coli without an effective selection procedure for the nar+ phenotype, a strategy utilizing nar::Tn5 mutants was employed. Partial segments of the nar operon containing Tn5 insertions were cloned into plasmid pBR322 by using the transposon resistance character for selection. A hybrid plasmid was constructed in vitro from two of these plasmids and isolated by a procedure that involved screening a population of transformed nar(Ts) mutant TS9A for expression of thermal stable nitrate reductase activity. A detailed restriction site map of the resulting plasmid, pSR95, corresponded closely to the composite restriction endonuclease map deduced for the nar region from maps of the cloned nar::Tn5 fragments. When transformed with pSR95, wild-type strain PK27 overproduced the alpha, beta, and gamma subunits of nitrate reductase, although nitrate reductase activity was only slightly increased. The alpha and beta subunits were overproduced about 5- to 10-fold and accumulated mostly as an inactive aggregate in the cytoplasm; the gamma subunit overproduction was detected as a threefold increase in the specific content of cytochrome b555 in the membrane fraction. Functional nitrate reductase and the cytochrome spectrum associated with functional nitrate reductase were restored in the nar::Tn5 mutant EE1 after transformation with pSR95. Although the specific activity of nitrate reductase in this case was less than that of the wild type, both the alpha and beta subunits appeared to be overproduced in an inactive form. In both strains PK27(pSR95) and EE1(pSR95), the formation of nitrate reductase activity and the accumulation of inactive subunits were repressed during aerobic growth. From these observations and the accumulation of inactive subunits were repressed during aerobic growth. From these observations and the demonstration that pSR95 contains a functional nor operon that encodes the alpha, beta, gamma subunits of nitrate reductase.