Nucleotide sequence and exact localization of the neomycin phosphotransferase gene from transposon Tn5.

The nucleotide sequence of 1200 bp from the unique region of transposon Tn5 containing the neomycin phosphotransferase gene (neo) was determined, and the location of the neo gene was identified by deletion mutants in a translational reading frame of 792 bp. The derived gene product, an aminoglycoside 3'-phosphotransferase (APH) II, consists of 264 amino acid residues and has a calculated Mr of 29053. Its amino acid sequence shows sequence homologies to the APH type I enzyme coded for by transposon Tn903 (Oka et al., 1981).