Nucleotide sequence of the F41 fimbriae subunit gene in Escherichia coli B41.

A clone encoding the F41 f imbnal sub-unit gene from E coli B41, was isolated from an B1BL3 library using an oligonucleotide based on the published N-termlnal amino acid sequence (1). The DNA sequence of an t I66bp fragment revealed an open reading frame encoding a protein of 277 amino acids including a 22 amino acid leader sequence (dash underlined). This corresponds to a mature protein of 29004 daltons which correlates with the molecular weight estimation of 29500 daltons by 5DS-PAGE (1). Extensive horfiology with the K88 f imbnal sub-unit gene (2,3) was found in the 5' untranslated and leader sequence regions (underlined) A dyad repeat (arrowed) in the 3' untranslated region represents a putative transcription terminator. A similar sequence of the F41 f imbnal gene from a porcine E coli VAC 1676 has recently been reported (4)