Gene structure of heat shock proteins 61KDa and 12KDa (thermophilic chaperonins) of thermophilic bacterium PS3.

Heat shock proteins 60 (hsp60) and 10 (hsp10) are essential for the formation and restoration of many supramolecular structures. For reconstitution of these structures, we isolated stable hsps of 61kDa and 12kDa, which are similar to hsp60 and hsp10, respectively, from the supernatant fraction of thermophilic bacterium PS3 by ATP-Agarose chromatography. Using synthetic DNA of the deduced sequence, the 1.6kbp double stranded DNA encoding both proteins was obtained by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The complete sequence of the resulting reading frames showed high homology to those of the genes encoding GroEL (hsp60) and GroES (hsp10) of E. coli, and hsp60s and hsp10s of several other species. The genes for the 12K and 61K were present in the same operon. 61K was also partially similar to the F1 alpha subunit of thermophilic ATP synthase, which is highly reconstitutable to form the alpha beta complex.