In silico Nucleotide Sequence Analysis of the Colicin E7-K317 plasmid: A Bioinformatics Approach

Abstract

Colicins are protein antibiotics that are synthesized by E. coli cells and act against related species. E colicins are plasmidencoded antibacterial proteins produced by E. coli which employ the BtuB receptor for its reception into sensitive target cell. The objective of the current study was to undertake the in silico analysis of complete nucleotide sequences of pColE7-K317 plasmid and to explore the relationship of predicted open reading frames with other known colicin plasmids using bioinformatics tools. The nucleotide sequences of the pColE-7-K317 were analyzed using Gene Mark software, Vector NTI, MEGA6, and online gene analysis tools including BLAST. The data of bioinformatics analysis of the complete nucleotide sequences of pColE7-K317, comprising of 6077 bps, demonstrated seven open reading frames (ORFs) on the plasmid. Four ORFs, including three coding for ColE7 operon and one ORF for replication region have previously been characterized. In the present study, we report three new previously unrecognized putative OFRs. Of these three, one ORF located on positive strand displayed close homology with mobA gene of E .coli whereas two ORFs, one located on positive and other on negative strand, were identified to correspond with hypothetical proteins.