Nucleotide sequence of the nfo gene of Escherichia coli K-12.

The nfo gene of Escherichia coli K-12 which encodes endonuclease IV has been sequenced. The predicted gene product has a molecular weight of 31,562, in good agreement with the size of the gene product estimated by maxicell analysis. The nfo promoter was mapped by primer extension of in vivo transcripts. Inspection of the nucleotide sequence revealed no regions of potential secondary structure corresponding to a transcriptional terminator downstream from the structural gene; however, there was a potential open reading frame immediately downstream from the nfo structural gene.