On the process of cellular division in Escherichia coli: nucleotide sequence of the gene for penicillin-binding protein 3.

We determined the nucleotide sequence of a DNA fragment containing the ftsI gene coding for the penicillin-binding protein 3 (PBP-3), an indispensable enzyme for cell division of Escherichia coli. The entire ftsI gene was within the 2.8 kilobase PvuII fragment derived from the chromosomal segment on pLC26-6 (Nishimura et al. 1977). The coding region for PBP-3 was identified by comparison with the N-terminal amino acid sequence of in vitro synthesized PBP-3. The structural gene for ftsI consisted of 1,764 base-pairs coding for a 588 amino acid residue-polypeptide with a molecular weight of 63,850. PBP-3 synthesized in vitro showed a lower mobility in SDS-gel electrophoresis than that of the authentic PBP-3, suggesting that the primary translation product of the ftsI gene may be processed to yield mature PBP-3.