The proteins involved in sucrose synthesis in the marine cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 are encoded by two genes transcribed from a gene cluster

It has been reported that higher plants and cyanobacteria synthesize sucrose (Suc) by a similar sequential action of sucrose-phosphate synthase (SPS) and sucrose-phosphate phosphatase (SPP). In the genome of the marine unicellular cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 there is a sequence that was not annotated as a putative SPP encoding gene (sppA), although the sequence was available. In this study, we functionally characterize the sppA gene of that strain and demonstrate that it is cotranscribed with spsA, the SPS encoding gene. This is the first report on the coordination of Suc synthesis gene expression in an oxygenic-photosynthetic organism.