Characterization of the Small Cryptic Plasmid, pGD2, of Klebsiellia sp. KCL-2.

One of the cryptic plasmids from the oil degrading bacterium Klebsiella sp. KCL-2, the small plasmid pGD2, has been identified and characterized. This plasmid has a size of 3.6 kb with unknown functions. We constructed the recombinant plasmid pMGD2. The nucleotide sequences of the plasmid were determined and two open reading frames were detected. ORF1 encodes a replication initiator protein (RepA), which has a high degree of homology with the protein of ColE2 plasmid. The product encoded by ORF2 showed a high similarity with the transposase protein of IS5. IS5 is 1195 by long and contains an inverted terminal repetition of 16 bp with one mismatch. Stem-loop structures in the 5'untranslated region of the repA suggest that a putative gene, incA, is located in a complementary strand to the leader region of the repA mRNA.