Abstract

Escherichia coli contains several lipoproteins in addition to the major outer membrane lipoprotein (Ichihara, S., Hussain, M., and Mizushima, S. (1981) J. Biol. Chem. 256, 3125-3129). We cloned the gene for one of these new lipoproteins by using a synthetic 15-mer oligonucleotide probe identical to the DNA sequence at the signal peptide cleavage site of the major lipoprotein. The DNA sequence of the cloned gene revealed an open reading frame encoding a 272-amino acid protein with a signal peptide of 23 amino acid residues. The amino acid sequence of the putative cleavage site region of the signal peptide, -Leu-Leu-Ala-Gly-Cys-, is identical to that of the major lipoprotein. When the cloned gene was expressed in E. coli, a gene product with an apparent molecular weight of approximately 29,000 was identified which agrees well with the calculated molecular weight (27,800). The product was labeled with [3H]glycerol, and a precursor molecule of increased molecular weight was accumulated when cells were treated with globomycin, a specific inhibitor for prolipoprotein signal peptidase. We thus designed the gene product as lipoprotein-28. Unlike the major lipoprotein, lipoprotein-28 was found to be localized in the cytoplasmic membrane. A possible orientation of lipoprotein-28 in the E. coli envelope is discussed.