In vivo selected promoter and ribosome binding site up-mutations: demonstration that the Escherichia coli bla promoter and a Shine-Dalgarno region with low complementarity to the 16 S ribosomal RNA function in Bacillus subtilis.

We have constructed a plasmid, pQS1, in which a mouse dihydrofolate reductase (5,6,7,8-tetrahydrofolate:NADP:oxidoreductase; EC 1.5.1.3; DHFR) cDNA is inserted in the unique PstI site of a gram-positive/gram-negative shuttle vector derived from pBR322. The cDNA is expressed under the control of the bla promoter, which, like most gram-negative bacterial genes, is considered not to be expressed in Bacillus subtilis, and its coding sequence is translated from a polycistronic message. We have selected in vivo and studied, in Escherichia coli and B. subtilis, expression mutants with promoter and ribosome binding site sequence mutations. One promoter mutation changes the third nucleotide of the -35 region from a C to a G. As expected, this substitution results in increased transcriptional activity in E. coli. In B. subtilis, this mutation induces the accumulation not only of a low but significant amount of dhfr mRNA but also of DHFR, demonstrating that binding strengths with a free energy as low as -9.4 kcal/mol are sufficient to promote ribosome binding in B. subtilis. The association of the promoter mutation (C-G) with a mutation which creates a strong B. subtilis ribosome binding site (-21 kcal/mol) results in the accumulation of a large amount of dhfr mRNA. This demonstrates the importance of having an efficient ribosome binding site in the evaluation of promoter function: for example, with this strong ribosome binding site we can show that the wild-type bla promoter is recognized by the B. subtilis transcription machinery.