We have determined a 17,484 bp nucleotide sequence around the 39 degrees region, located about 480 kb downstream from the zero position of the Bacillus subtilis chromosome physical map. Among the 17 putative ORFs identified, orf1 and orf2 seem to correspond to mtlA and mtlB, encoding mannitol-specific phosphotransferase enzyme II and mannitol-1-phosphate dehydrogenase, respectively. orf4 seems to be another signal peptidase I gene (sipS) of B. subtilis. The putative products of six ORFs were similar to known proteins in data banks, namely a hypothetical 29.7 kDa protein of Escherichia coli (Orf7), a lactam utilization protein (Orf8), the urea amidolyase of yeast (Orf12), the IcIR regulatory protein for aceAB of Salmonella typhimurium (Orf13), penicillin-binding protein 2 (Orf16) and aryl-alcohol dehydrogenase (Orf17). The amino acid sequence of Orf3 showed 34% identity with that of LeuC of B. subtilis, though they seem to be functionally different. The remaining seven ORFs did not show similarity to any known proteins.