Structure and function of the intercistronic regulatory deoC-deoA element of Escherichia coli K-12.

Abstract
The deoC-deoA intercistronic region from E. coli was characterized by DNA and protein sequencing. This region consists of 129 base pairs and includes a regulatory element, which was also found in other operons containing large intercistronic regions. The results suggest that the regulatory element functions as a transcriptional attenuator and it seems likely that the primary role of this element is to effect differential expression of operon genes. It was unambiguously shown that the initiation codon for the deoA gene is UUG.