Nucleotide sequence of the iron regulatory gene fur

Abstract

The fur gene of Escherichia coli is involved in all iron-regulated transcriptions hitherto studied. The nucleotide sequence of an 868 basepair fragment containing the fur gene was determined. There was only a single longer reading frame. The amino acid sequence derived from the nucleotide sequence comprised 148 amino acids that together made a polypeptide of 16,795 daltons. The amino acid sequence was confirmed by determination of the amino acid composition, the carboxy-terminal lysine residue and the internal Lys-Lys and Lys-Arg sequences of the isolated Fur protein. The nucleotide sequence contains typical initiation and termination sites for transcription and translation.