The XbaI-BlnI-CeuI genomic cleavage map of Salmonella typhimurium LT2 determined by double digestion, end labelling, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis.

Endonuclease digestion of the 4,800-kb chromosome of Salmonella typhimurium LT2 yielded 24 XbaI fragments, 12 BlnI fragments, and 7 CeuI fragments, which were separated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The 90-kb plasmid pSLT has one XbaI site and one BlnI site. The locations of the fragments around the circular chromosome and of the digestion sites of the different endonucleases with respect to each other were determined by excision of agarose blocks containing fragments from single digestion, redigestion with a second enzyme, end labelling with 32P by using T7 DNA polymerase, reelectrophoresis, and autoradiography. Forty-three cleavage sites were established on the chromosome, and the fragments and cleavage sites were designated in alphabetical order and numerical order, respectively, around the chromosome. One hundred nine independent Tn10 insertions previously mapped by genetic means were located by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis on the basis of the presence of XbaI and BlnI sites in Tn10. The genomic cleavage map was divided into 100 units called centisomes; the endonuclease cleavage sites and the genes defined by the positions of Tn10 insertions were located by centisome around the map. There is very good agreement between the genomic cleavage map, defined in centisomes, and the linkage map, defined in minutes. All seven rRNA genes were located on the map; all have the CeuI digestion site, all four with the tRNA gene for glutamate have the XbaI and the BlnI sites, but only four of the seven have the BlnI site in the 16S rRNA (rrs) gene. Their inferred orientation of transcription is the same as in Escherichia coli. A rearrangement of the rrnB and rrnD genes with respect to the arrangement in E. coli, observed earlier by others, has been confirmed. The sites for all three enzymes in the rrn genes are strongly conserved compared with those in E. coli, but the XbaI and BlnI sites outside the rrn genes show very little conservation.