Cloning of T4 gene 32 and expression of the wild-type protein under lambda promoter PL regulation in Escherichia coli.

Bacteriophage T4 gene 32 encodes a single-stranded DNA binding protein required for T4 DNA replication, recombination, and repair. Previous attempts at cloning gene 32 have failed due to a presumably deleterious effect on host cell viability. In addition, overexpression of gene 32 would be expected to be limited by the autoregulatory ability of the gene 32 product g32P. A repetitive A + T-rich sequence flanking the ribosome binding site of gene 32 has been implicated in this translational regulation. To circumvent these problems, the wild-type gene for g32P has been reconstructed in M13 using restriction fragments from T4 g32am453 and synthetic oligodeoxynucleotides so that it no longer includes its native promoter and putative autoregulatory region. The g32am453 codon TAG was changed back to TGG as in wild-type gene 32 using site-directed oligodeoxynucleotide mutagenesis. In vectors containing the lambda leftward promoter PL, gene 32 is overexpressed with the resulting transcripts being depressed at g32P concentrations that repress the wild-type gene 32 transcripts.