Nucleotide sequence analysis of genes essential for capsular polysaccharide biosynthesis in Streptococcus pneumoniae type 19F.

Previous studies have shown that the capsular polysaccharide synthesis (cps) locus of the type 19F Streptococcus pneumoniae strain SSZ was closely linked to a copy of the insertion sequence IS1202 (J.K. Morona, A. Guidolin, R. Morona, D. Hansman, and J.C. Paton, J. Bacteriol. 176:4437-4443, 1994). In the present study, we used plasmid insertion and rescue and inverse PCR to clone 6,322 bp of flanking DNA upstream of IS1202. Sequence analysis indicated that this region contains six complete open reading frames (ORFs) and one partial ORF that are arranged as a single transcriptional unit. Chromosomal disruption of any of these ORFs in a smooth-type 19F strain leads to a rough (unencapsulated) phenotype, indicating that this operon is essential for capsule production. The ORFs have therefore been designated cps19fA to cps19fG, where cps19fA is the first gene of the type 19F cps locus. Furthermore, many of the gene products from this incomplete operon exhibit strong similarities to proteins known to be involved in the production of capsular polysaccharide, exopolysaccharide, teichoic acid, enterobacterial common antigen, and lipopolysaccharide from numerous other bacterial species. This has allowed us to propose functions for many of the type 19F cps gene products. Southern hybridization studies reveal that cps19fA and cps19fB are conserved among all 12 pneumococcal serotypes tested, whereas genes downstream of cps19fB are conserved among some, but not all, of the serotypes tested.