A 21548 bp nucleotide sequence around the 24 degrees region of the Bacillus subtilis chromosome, located 306 kb downstream from the zero point of the physical map, was determined. Twenty-one putative ORFs were identified: two ORFs (Orf1 and Orf20) were consistent with the nucleotide and amino acid sequence of B. subtilis OrfJ, whose function is not known, and Pcp, respectively; four were found to display significant similarities to known proteins in data banks, i.e. 5-keto-3-deoxyglucarate dehydratase (Orf2), aldehyde dehydrogenase (Orf3) and two glucarate dehydratases (Orf4 and 5); three had considerable similarity to the sensor-regulator proteins of bacterial two-component signal transduction systems (Orf1, 11 and 12); two had considerably high levels of similarity to parts of known proteins (Orf13 and 19); and five showed low levels of similarity to known proteins in the data banks. The remaining six ORFs showed no similarity to known proteins.