Mosaic structure of the small cryptic plasmid pKST23 from Escherichia coli

Small plasmid pKST23 was isolated from sheep ruminal Escherichia coli population. Plasmid sequence was determined to be 2,779 bp in length and was found to have an overall 42 % of GC pairs. However, its sequence can be divided into two regions based on genetic composition and the GC content. It was found that the high GC region spanning approximately from nucleotide 1,300 to 2,750 was identical to a group of small Escherichia coli plasmids and encoded a putative replication protein identical to plasmid pKL1 Rep protein. The part with lower GC pairs seemed to be more specific as it showed no similarity to the GenBank database. Computational analysis revealed four open reading frames, two of which showed considerable homology to replication proteins. PCR primers targeting parts of the two different regions of plasmid pKST23 were used to assess the occurrence of related plasmids within ruminal E. coli population.