Uniformity of the Genes of Bacterial Dehalogenases Acting on Fluoroacetate

Abstract

Plasmid pU0 1 encodes two kinds of haloacetate dehalogenases, H-1 and H-2; H-1 acts on fluoroacetate but H-2 does not. DNA-DNA hydridization experiments demonstrated that there is no homology between the H-1 and H-2 genes. This indicates that there is no evolutionary relationship between the two dehalogenases. Many bacteria assimilating fluoroacetate, chloroacetate, or 2-chloropropionate were isolated. The isolates capable of defluorinating fluoroacetate were all found to contain a H-1-like dehalogenase and a gene homologous and were perhaps essentially identical to the H-1 gene, suggesting that bacterial dehalogenases acting on fluoroacetate are considered to be only one species