Bacterial strains and plasmids used in this study.

a<p>phenol⁺, growth on phenol; phenol⁻, no growth on phenol; Ap^R, ampicillin resistance; Tc^R, tetracycline resistance; Km^R, kanamycin resistance.</p

Primers used in this study.

a<p>Restriction sites for BamHI (5′-GGATCC-3′), HindIII (5′-AAGCTT-3′), EcoRI (5′-GAATTC-3′), and SalI (5′-GTCGAC-3′) are shown in bold and italic.</p

Analysis of the promoter region and transcriptional start site for mphK.

<p>(A) Intergenic region between <i>mphR</i> and <i>mphK</i>. The first nucleotide in the transcript is shown in bold. Arrows and dashed arrows indicate incomplete inverted repeats (named IR1, IR2, and IR3) and the translational start codons for <i>mphR</i> and <i>mphK</i>, respectively. Double-underlines mean the putative σ⁵⁴-dependent −12/−24 promoter consensus sequence and the σ⁷⁰-dependent −10/−35 promoter consensus sequences. An arrowhead with +1 indicates the transcriptional start site for <i>mphK</i>. A grey-shaded box indicates the putative ribosome-binding site for the <i>mphK</i> transcription. (B) Mapping of the transcriptional start site for <i>mphK</i> by primer extension. A sequence ladder was generated with the same primer (lanes T, A, C, and G).</p