A 273 bp DNA fragment containing the attenuator of the pyrBI operon was inserted into a synthetic cloning site early in the lacZ gene on a plasmid. By this operation the first few codons of lacZ were joined through a linker to the last 39 codons of the open reading frame for the putative pyrB leader peptide. In addition a gene fusion encoding a hybrid protein with -galactosidase activity was formed between the pyrB start and the rest of lacZ. This gene fusion is expressed from the lac promoter and the transcript is subject to facultative termination at the pyrBI attenuator. Different variants of the lacZ start were used that either contained a stop codon or directed the translation toward the attenuator in any of the alternative reading frames. The following results were obtained.