Nucleotide sequence of the sporulation operon, spoIIIE, of Bacillus subtilis.

A fragment of Bacillus subtilis DNA 3490 bp long, capable of complementing spoIIIE mutations, was sequenced. The region of the fragment that encodes functions required for sporulation was delimited using integrational plasmids. Sequencing showed that this region contained an operon with two open reading frames together with associated ribosome-binding sites. The deduced translation products would be polypeptides of 518 and 252 amino acid residues. Several sequences resembling promoters recognized by RNA polymerase containing sigma 29 occur in the region preceding the larger open reading frame. Although no transcription-termination signal was identified downstream of the smaller coding region, analysis with integrational plasmids and determination of the size of spoIIIE messenger RNA suggest that the locus does not contain a third gene.