Cloning and sequencing of a jack bean urease-encoding cDNA.

Abstract A cDNA which encodes the entire amino acid (aa) sequence of the mature jack bean urease has been cloned in Escherichia coli from a library prepared from the mRNA of developing jack beans. It was necessary to use reverse transcriptase in the second strand cDNA synthesis m order to obtain full-length cDNA. The complete cDNA was obtained in the form of two contiguous DNA fragments, each of which was completely sequenced. The conceptual translation of the nt sequence gave an 840-aa sequence which was identical to the directly determined sequence except for one conservative aa substitution (Takashima et al., Eur. J. Biochem. 175 (1988) 151–165). These data constitute the first report on the cloning and sequence of the cDNA encoding a urease from any higher plant.