Vibrio cholerae CTXPhi phage repressor gene is borne on an insertion sequence-like element and encodes a putative transposase.

Abstract

Bioinformatics analyses show the presence of a novel insertion sequence-like element in the CTXPhi phage of Vibrio cholerae. The solitary open reading frame encompassed by the element is known to encode a repressor (RstR) of phage DNA replication and is responsible for phage heteroimmunity. Analysis of the nucleotide and protein sequence of the repressor and its flanking non-coding regions indicates that it resembles distinctly simple bacterial insertion elements in numerous aspects. Based on the results of extensive sequence analysis, we propose that the rstR gene is borne on an insertion sequence-like element and that the RstR protein encodes a putative transposase. We put forward the possibility that a bi-directional promoter could regulate the divergent transcription of the neighbouring genes of rstR and rstA. The possibility of overlapping reading frames yielding distinct repressor and transposase proteins is also expanded based on the analyses.