Gene organization and target specificity of the prokaryotic mobile genetic element IS26

The 820-bp mobile genetic element IS26 loses its ability to promote transpositional cointegration (1) by short deletions near the middle of the element causing shifts in both reading frames ORFI (left to right) and ORFII (right to left) and (2) by deletions causing substitutions of the C-terminus of ORFI but not affecting ORFII. The 702-bp ORFI is thus likely to code for the IS26 transposase. An 82-bp long sequence from the left end of IS26 contains a promoter-like structure in front of the start of ORFI at coordinate 64. In appropriately constructed plasmids, this sequence promotes the expression of the galK structural gene. The observation provides additional evidence for the functional relevance of ORFI. Neither the presence nor the absence of an intact IS26 element on the same plasmid affects measurably the degree of the galK gene expression by the IS26 promoter. Sequence comparison of 14 independent integration sites of IS26 and its relatives reveals no striking rules for target selection by the element, and the distrubtion of integration sites of IS26 on small multicopy plasmids is nearly random and independent of the local AT-content.