The PBP 5 synthesis repressor (psr) gene of Enterococcus hiraeATCC 9790 is substantially longer than previously reported

A reexamination of the nucleotide sequence of the psrgene of Enterococcus hiraerevealed the presence of two additional nucleotides at residues 1190 and 1191. As a result, instead of a stop codon after 148 aa, the psrgene product would contain 293 aa residues. The revised size of the gene product was confirmed by subsequently cloning and expressing the psrgene in Escherichia coli. The derived amino acid sequence of the revised psrgene product was found to be similar to several other proteins in the combined GenBank/EMBL database. The protein products of some of these genes are thought to play regulatory role(s) in exo or capsular polysaccharide synthesis and/or in cell wall metabolism. All the putative homologs of the revised Psr appear to have a putative membrane‐anchoring domain at their N‐termini. Amino acid blocks with high degrees of similarity have been identified in the aligned sequences, and it is suggested that these common motifs could be of structural or functional importance.