A New ICE Subfamily Integrative and Conjugative Element Responsible for Horizontal Transfer of Biphenyl and Salicylic Acid Catabolic Pathway in the PCB-Degrading Strain KF716.

Integrative and conjugative elements (ICEs) are chromosomally integrated self-transmissible mobile genetic elements. Although some ICEs are known to carry genes for the degradation of aromatic compounds, information on their genetic features is limited. We identified a new member of the ICE family carrying biphenyl catabolic genes and salicylic acid catabolic genes from the PCB-degrading strain KF716. The 117-kb ICEKF716 contains common core regions exhibiting homology with those of degradative ICE from B13 and ICE from sp. CIB. A comparison of the gene loci collected from the public database revealed that several putative ICEs from B6-2 JAB1, AN10 and 2A20 had highly conserved core regions with those of ICEKF716, along with the variable region that encodes the catabolic genes for biphenyl, naphthalene, toluene, or phenol. These data indicate that this type of ICE subfamily is ubiquitously distributed within aromatic compound-degrading bacteria. ICEKF716 was transferred from KF716 to PAO1 via a circular extrachromosomal intermediate form. In this study, we describe the structure and genetic features of ICEKF716 compared to other catabolic ICEs.