Overproduction of the membrane-bound components of the histidine permease from Salmonella typhimurium: identification of the M protein.

The periplasmic histidine permease of Salmonella typhimurium is composed of a soluble histidine-binding protein and three membrane-bound components. These latter are produced in very small amounts and only two, the Q and the P protein, have been previously identified. This paper describes the construction of a plasmid carrying the hisQ, hisM, and hisP genes under the control of the lambda PL promoter, thus allowing great overproduction of those gene products. The M protein has been identified in such overproducing strains and its nature confirmed by constructing in vitro hisM deletions within the plasmid. With these results the identification of all components of the histidine permease has been completed.