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To identify the gene (s) related to the antagonistic activity of Enterobacter cloacae B8 and to elucidate its antagonistic mechanism.Transposon-mediated mutagenesis and tagging method and cassette PCR-based chromosomal walking method were adopted to isolate the mutant strain(s) of B8 that lost the antagonistic activity and to clone DNA fragments around Tn5 insertion site. Sequence compiling and open reading frame (ORF) finding were done with DNAStar program and homologous sequence and conserved domain searches were performed with BlastN or BlastP programs at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. To verify the gene involved in the antagonistic activity, complementation of a full-length clone of the anrF gene to the mutant B8F strain was used.A 3 321 bp contig around the Tn5 insertion site was obtained and an ORF of 2 634 bp in length designated as anrF gene encoding for a 877 aa polyketide synthase-like protein was identified. It had a homology of 83% at the nucleotide level and 79% ID/87% SIM at the protein level, to the admM gene of Pantoea agglomerans andrimid biosynthetic gene cluster (AY192157). The Tn5 was inserted at 2 420 bp of the gene corresponding to the COG3319 (the thioesterase domain of type I polyketide synthase) coding region on B8F. The antagonistic activity against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae was resumed with complementation of the full-length anrF gene to the mutant B8F.The anrF gene obtained is related to the antagonistic activity of B8, and the antagonistic substances produced by B8 are andrimid and/or its analogs.

To understand the antagonistic mechanism of the broad spectrum antagonistic Enterobacter cloacae B8, Tn5 transposon-mediated mutagenesis is performed using suicide plasmid pZJ25. Two mutant strains that lost antagonistic character are isolated. Tagging with kan r gene on Tn5, an antagonistic related DNA fragment, the F fragment, right of the Tn5 insertion site is cloned in a plasmid named pTLF, from one of the mutant strains B8F. The 735 bp F fragment is then sequenced after subcloning. Genomic DNA of the original B8 strain is isolated, digested with Pst I and ligated to Pst I cassette. DNA fragments left and right of the F fragment are amplified from the Pst I cassette library using cassette primer and specific primers designed according to known sequence. 1106 bp sequence left of the F fragment and 664bp sequence right of the F fragment are finally obtained. Bioinformatics analysis shows that the contig assembled from the sequences of the cloned antagonistic related DNA fragments of B8 encodes three ORFs and is homogeneous to admM, admN and admO genes of Pantoea agglomerans andrimid biosynthetic gene cluster (AY192157). The ORF, named anrF gene which encodes a polyketide synthase, knocked out by Tn5 insertion, is a homology of admM and the insertion site of Tn5 is at 214 bp upstream of the stop codon. It is concluded that the anrF gene is a gene related to the antagonistic activity of E. cloacae B8, and speculated that the antagonistic substance produced by B8 is an andrimid.