Abstract
The bacterium Rhizobium japonicum, which fixes atmospheric nitrogen in symbiosis with soybean roots is a member of the so-called ‘slow-growing’ group of Rhizobium, which implies that its nif genes are depressed in free-living, microaerobic growth conditions. This makes it a potentially useful organism for studies of the molecular biology of the regulation of symbiotic nif genes1,2. Although classical genetic experiments with this species are not well advanced, we decided to use recombinant DNA techniques to isolate and characterize its nif genes. Comparative studies on the biochemistry3, immunology2,4 and genetics5 of nitrogenase from different N2-fixing microorganisms suggested a fairly strong DNA sequence homology for the nitrogenase structural genes of the species investigated. We have therefore used the cloned nitrogenase structural genes from a free-living, N2-fixing bacterium, Klebsiella pneumoniae6, as hybridization probes5 to find homologous DNA regions in a clone bank of DNA fragments of R. japonicum. We report here that the nif homology region includes two of the nitrogenase genes, nifH and nifD.
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References
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Hennecke, H. Recombinant plasmids carrying nitrogen fixation genes from Rhizobium japonicum. Nature 291, 354–355 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/291354a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/291354a0
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