Structure of two retrons of Escherichia coli and their common chromosomal insertion site

Abstract

It has been shown that certain strains of myxobacteria and of Escherichia coli have a genetic element encoding a reverse transcriptase (RT). This element, called a 'retron', produces a covalently linked RNA-DNA compound (msDNA-RNA). Here, I report the complete nucleotide sequence of retron EC-86, the retron in E. coli B, together with its flanking regions. Retron EC-86 contains genes for msDNA-RNA (msd, and msr), a gene for RT (ret) and a gene for an open reading frame whose function is unknown. The upstream junction is composed of the sequence GCGCGCGC, but there are no direct or inverted repeats at the retron-host junctions. It is also shown that another retron of E. coli, EC-67, which was isolated originally from the clinical strain CL1 and was later found to be present also in a clinical E. coli isolate from Brazil, is inserted at the same chromosomal site as retron EC-86. Retron EC-67 contains only msd, msr, and ret. I suggest that these two retrons were independently inserted into the same site of their host strains via a novel mechanism of integration.