Figure 1

Genes, transcription and deletions in the cpoA-spr0985 region of S. pneumoniae R6. (A) Wide horizontal arrows indicate genes apparently co-transcribed with cpoA (black), and flanking genes (white). spr0983.1 has not been annotated in the R6 genome [20], but its presence has been predicted from other S. pneumoniae genomes such as TIGR4 [56]. The positions and extend of in-frame deletions are shown as white boxes below the respective genes. Lines above the genetic map represent DNA products obtained by RT-PCR with total RNA and gene-specific primers. The positions of the promoter P _cpoA and of putative ρ-independent terminators (T₁ [ΔG = −10.4 kcal/mol], T₂ [ΔG = −10.1 kcal/mol]) are given by angled and vertical arrows, respectively. (B) The nucleotide sequence upstream of S. pneumoniae R6 cpoA and putative 3'-coding sequences is shown together with the predicted peptide sequence (Sp). The −10 element of P _cpoA is underlined, and the transcription start site (+1) is indicated with an angled arrow. The position of an adenine nucleotide, deleted in the mutant strain P106 [7] is marked with *Δ. Two potential start codons of the cpoA gene (ATG₁, ATG₂; see text for detail) are underlined. The respective cpoA sequences of S. mitis B6 (Sm) and S. oralis Uo5 (So) are shown below.