Physical map of the Brucella melitensis 16 M chromosome

We present the first restriction map of the Brucella melitensis 16 M chromosome obtained by Southern blot hybridization of SpeI, XhoI, and XbaI fragments separated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. All restriction fragments (a total of 113) were mapped into an open circle. The main difficulty in mapping involved the exceedingly high number of restriction fragments, as was expected considering the 59% G + C content of the Brucella genome. Several cloned genes were placed on this map, especially rRNA operons which are repeated three times. The size of the B. melitensis chromosome, estimated as 2,600 kb long in a previous study, appeared longer (3,130 kb) by restriction mapping. This restriction map is an initial approach to achieve a genetic map of the Brucella chromosome.