Nucleotide sequence of a type II DNA topoisomerase gene. Bacteriophage T4 gene 39

T4 DNA topoisomerase is a type II enzyme and is thought to be required for normal T4 DNA replication T4 gene 39 codes for the largest of the three subunits of T4 DNA topoisomerase. I have determined the nucleotide sequence of a region of 2568 nucleotides of T4 DNA which includes gene 39. The location of the gene was established by the identification of the first fifteen amino acids in the large open reading frame in the DNA sequence as those found at the amino-terminus of the purified 39-protein. The coding region of gene 39 has 1560 bases, and it is followed by two in-frame stop codons. The gene is preceded by a typical Shine-Dalgarno sequence as well as possible promoter sequences for E. coli RNA polymerase. T4 39-protein consists of 520 amino acids, and it has a calculated molecular weight of 58,478. By comparing the amino acid sequences, T4 39-protein is found to share homology with the gyrB subunit of DNA gyrase. This suggests that these topoisomerase subunits may be equivalent functionally. Some of the characteristics of the 39-protein and its structural features predicted from the DNA sequence data are discussed.