Plasmid control of 6-aminohexanoic acid cyclic dimer degradation enzymes of Flavobacterium sp. KI72.

Flavobacterium sp. K172, which is able to grow on 6-aminohexanoic acid cyclic dimer as the sole source of carbon and nitrogen, and plasmid control of the responsible enzymes, 6-aminohexanoic acid cyclic dimer hydrolase and 6-aminohexanoic acid linear oligomer hydrolase, were studied. The wild strain of K172 harbors three kinds of plasmid, pOAD1 (26.2 megadaltons), pOAD2 (28.8 megadaltons), and pOAD3 (37.2 megadaltons). The wild strain K172 was readily cured of its ability to grow on the cyclic dimer by mitomycin C, and the cyclic dimer hydrolase could not be detected either as catalytic activity or by antibody precipitation. No reversion of the cured strains was detected. pOAD2 was not detected in every cured strain tested but was restored in a transformant. The transformant recovered both of the enzyme activities, and the cyclic dimer hydrolase of the transformant was immunologically identical with that of the wild strain. All of the strains tested, including the wild, cured, and transformant ones, possessed identical pOAD3 irrespective of the metabolizing activity. Some of the cured strains possessed pOAD1 identical with the wild strain, but the others harbored plasmids with partially altered structures which were likely to be derived from pOAD1 by genetic rearrangements such as deletion, insertion, or substitution. These results suggested that the genes of the enzymes were borne on pOAD2.