Conjugative Transposition of the Sucrose-Nisin Gene Cluster

Conjugative Transposition of the Sucrose-Nisin Gene Cluster 

A genetic linkage between nisin production, nisin immunity and the ability to use sucrose as a carbon source, was corroborated by the observation that these properties were transferred in a conjugation-like process [94]. It appeared that nisin and sucrose genes were clustered on chromosomal elements that were conjugative transposons [32,37,95,96]. 

The best characterized conjugative sucrose-nisin transposons are the 70-kb Tn5276 and Tn5301 [95, 97]. The conjugative transposon Tn5276 and Tn5301 

Genetic Organization of the Sucrose-Nisin Transposon TN5276 

Besides nisin, three other lantibiotics produced by LAB, namely lactococdn DR (=lacticin 481) [30,117-119], lactocin S [31, 33, 82] and carnodn U-I49 [35, 36,120] have been reported, but only the first two were genetically studied in more detail (Fig. 3) [82, 118-121]. Both lactocin S and lactococdn DR are members of the class I An lantibiotics. Lantibiotics of this class have a divergent leader peptide compared with the class lA, lantibiotics represented by nisin, but also their genetical organization differs significantly from that of the class lAj lantibiotics [40,82]. 

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