Cloning and nucleotide sequence of the gene coding for enzymatically active fragments of the Bacillus polymyxa β-amylase

The gene encoding β-amylase was cloned from Bacillus polymyxa 72 into Escherichia coli HB101 by inserting HindIII-generated DNA fragments into the HindIII site of pBR322. The 4.8-kilobase insert was shown to direct the synthesis of β-amylase. A 1.8-kilobase AccI-AccI fragment of the donor strain DNA was sufficient for the β-amylase synthesis. Homologous DNA was found by Southern blot analysis to be present only in B. polymyxa 72 and not in other bacteria such as E. coli or B. subtilis. B. polymyxa, as well as E. coli harboring the cloned DNA, was found to produce enzymatically active fragments of β-amylases (70,000, 56,000, or 58,000, and 42,000 daltons), which were detected in situ by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the cloned 3.1-kilobase DNA revealed that it contains one open reading frame of 2,808 nucleotides without a translational stop codon. The deduced amino acid sequence for these 2,808 nucleotides encoding a secretory precursor of the β-amylase protein is 936 amino acids including a signal peptide of 33 or 35 residues at its amino-terminal end. The existence of a β-amylase of larger than 100,000 daltons, which was predicted on the basis of the results of nucleotide sequence analysis of the gene, was confirmed by examining culture supernatants after various cultivation periods. It existed only transiently during cultivation, but the multiform β-amylases described above existed for a long time. The large β-amylase (approximately 160,000 daltons) existed for longer in the presence of a protease inhibitor such as chymostatin, suggtesting that proteolytic cleavage is the cause of the formation of multiform β-amylases.