Generation of restriction map of Enterococcus faecalis OG1 and investigation of growth requirements and regions encoding biosynthetic function

A defined synthetic medium was used to determine the amino acid requirements of Enterococcus faecalis OG1 and to demonstrate the absence of a requirement for exogenous purines or pyrimidines. Genomic libraries prepared from strain OG1 were transduced into Escherichia coli auxotrophic mutants, and cloned DNAs which complemented pyrC, pyrD, purF, purL, and guaAB mutations were identified. These and other cloned DNAs with known functions were localized on a restriction map of OG1 which was generated with SfiI (5 fragments), AscI (9 fragments), and NotI (15 fragments); the size of the OG1 chromosome was revised from a previous estimate of approximately 2,750 kb to 2,825 kb. The synthetic medium and the restriction map should be useful for studying enterococcal metabolic functions and the relationships between chromosomally encoded genes.