Lactococcin A, a new bacteriocin from Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris: isolation and characterization of the protein and its gene

A new bacteriocin, termed lactococcin A (LCN-A), from Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris LMG 2130 was purified and sequenced. The polypeptide contained no unusual amino acids and showed no significant sequence similarity to other known proteins. Only lactococci were killed by the bacteriocin. Of more than 120 L. lactis strains tested, only 1 was found resistant to LCN-A. The most sensitive strain tested, L. lactis subsp. cremoris NCDO 1198, was inhibited by 7 pM LCN-A. By use of a synthetic DNA probe, lcnA was found to be located on a 55-kb plasmid. The lcnA gene was cloned and sequenced. The sequence data revealed that LCN-A is ribosomally synthesized as a 75-amino-acid precursor including a 21-amino-acid N-terminal extension. An open reading frame encoding a 98-amino-acid polypeptide was found downstream of and in the same operon as lcnA. We propose that this open reading frame encodes an immunity function for LCN-A. In Escherichia coli lcnA did not cause an LCN-A+ phenotype. L. lactis subsp. lactis IL 1403 produced small amounts of the bacteriocin and became resistant to LCN-A after transformation with a recombinant plasmid carrying lcnA. The other lactococcal strains transformed with the same recombinant plasmid became resistant to LCN-A but did not produce any detectable amount of the bacteriocin.