Preparations and properties of ribonucleic acid polymerase from Acinetobacter calcoaceticus

Characterization of the Acinetobacter plasmid, pRAY, and the identification of regulatory sequences upstream of an aadB gene cassette on this plasmid

Primer extension analyses carried out to identify the transcription start site of an aadB gene, which is part of a gene cassette recombined at a secondary site on an Acinetobacter plasmid, pRAY, suggest that transcription control signals in Acinetobacter are similar but not identical to their counterparts in Escherichia coli. pRAY was sequenced. An AT-rich region, containing eight copies of the consensus sequence, AAAAAATAT, previously shown to be present in the origins of replication of other Acinetobacter plasmids, was predicted to be the origin of pRAY. The translation product of one of the 10 open reading frames identified on pRAY shows homology to the mobilization protein, MbeA.

Characterization of Acinetobacter haemolyticus aac(6')-Ig gene encoding an aminoglycoside 6'-N-acetyltransferase which modifies amikacin

The amikacin resistance gene acc(6')-Ig of Acinetobacter haemolyticus BM2685 encoding an aminoglycoside 6'-N-acetyltransferase was characterized. The gene was identified as a coding sequence of 438 bp corresponding to a protein with a calculated mass of 16,522 Da. Analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence suggested that it was the fourth member of a subfamily of aminoglycoside 6'-N-acetyltransferases. The resistance gene was not transferable either by conjugation to Escherichia coli or to Acinetobacter baumannii or by transformation into Acinetobacter calcoaceticus. Plasmid DNA from strain BM2685 did not hybridize with an intragenic aac(6')-Ig probe. These results suggest a chromosomal location for this gene. The gene was detected by DNA hybridization in all 20 strains of A. haemolyticus tested but not in 179 other Acinetobacter strains, including A. baumannii, A. lwoffii, A. junii, and A. johnsonii and genospecies 3, 6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, of which 162 were amikacin resistant. The probe did not hybridize in dot blot assays with DNAs purified from members of the families Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonadaceae that encode 6'-N-acetyltransferases. These data suggest that the aac(6')-Ig gene is species specific and may be used to identify A. haemolyticus.