• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.387-392
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• 1998

Brevibacterium lactofermentum, a gram-positive bacteria, has both the diaminopimelate (DAP) pathway and meso-DAP-dehydrogenase (DDH) pathway for L-lysine biosynthesis. To investigate importance of DDH pathway and the related ddh gene in lysine production, we introduced site-specific mutagenesis technique. A 300 bp DNA fragment central to the meso-DAP-dehydrogenase gene (ddh) of B. lactofermentum was used to inactive chromosomal ddh gene via homologous recombination. Southern hybridization analysis confirmed that the chromosomal ddh gene was disrupted by the vector sequence. The B. lactofementum ddh mutant obtained have an inactive DDH pathway. The results reveal that inactivation of the ddh gene in B. lactofermentum leads to dramatic reduction of lysine production as well as decrease of the growth rate, indicating that the DDH pathway is essential for high-level lysine production as well as biosynthesis of meso-DAP.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.250-256
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• 1995

The ddh gene encoding meso-diaminopimelate (meso-DAP)-dehydrogenase (DDH) in Brevibacterium lactofermentum was isolated by complementation of the Escherichia coli dapD mutation. It was supposed from subcloning experiments and complementation tests that the evidence for DDH activity appeared in about 2.5 kb Xhol fragmented genome. The 2.5 kb Xhol fragment containing the ddh gene was sequenced, and an open reading frame of 960 bp encoding a polypeptide comprising 320 amino acids was found. Computer analysis indicated that the deduced amino acid of the B. lactofermentum ddh gene showed a high homology with that of the Corynebacterium glutamicum ddh gene.