Characterization of IS1110-like sequences found in Mycobacterium species other than Mycobacterium avium

During study of a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-degrading gene cluster in Mycobacterium sp. SNP11, which is a fast-growing strain related to Mycobacterium gilvum, a DNA segment with very high similarities to the IS1110 element of Mycobacterium avium was identified. Insertion sequence IS1110 was discovered for the first time in 1994 during a study of plasmid incidence in AIDS-derived M. avium strains. This element had thus far been detected in most human, veterinary, and environmental M. avium isolates, but not in other Mycobacterium species such as M. bovis, M. tuberculosis, M. xenopi, M. kansasii or M. gordonae. In the present paper, we describe the isolation and characterization of ISMysp1, an IS1110-like element present in several copies in the genome of Mycobacterium sp. strain SNP11. PCR and hybridization experiments revealed that this element is commonly found in fast-growing Mycobacterium strains. Moreover, Blast searches against the recently sequenced genome of M. smegmatis mc(2)155 revealed that this strain contains four IS1110-like elements. Analysis and sequence comparison of the whole of the IS1110-like elements revealed several common features not found in the most closely related mycobacterial members, IS900, IS901, IS902, IS1626 and IS1547.