The priA gene encoding the primosomal replicative n' protein of Escherichia coli

The Escherichia coli gene encoding protein n' has been isolated and named priA for primosomal protein A. Protein n' is absolutely required for the conversion of single-stranded phi X174 DNA to the duplex replicative form in an in vitro-reconstituted system. The gene maps to 88.7 minutes on the chromosome adjacent to the cytR locus. Soluble protein extracts from cells harboring the priA gene on a multicopy plasmid contained 45-fold more n' replication activity than wild-type extracts. Enhanced overproduction of greater than 1000-fold was achieved by replacing the natural Shine-Dalgarno sequence with that of the phage T7 phi 10 gene and placing this priA under the control of the T7 phage promoter and RNA polymerase. The priA sequence reveals a 732-amino acid open reading frame and a nucleotide-binding consensus site consistent with the size and ATPase activity of the purified protein. The gene for protein n has been named priB and the putative gene for protein n", priC.