Arsenic is a known toxic metalloid, whose trivalent and pentavalent ions can inhibit many biochemical processes. Operons which encode arsenic resistance have been found in multicopy plasmids from both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. The resistance mechanism is encoded from a single operon which typically consists of an arsenite ion-inducible repressor that regulates expression of an arsenate reductase and inner membrane-associated arsenite export system. Using a lacZ transcriptional gene fusion library, we have identified an Escherichia coli operon whose expression is induced by cellular exposure to sodium arsenite at concentrations as low as 5 micrograms/liter. This chromosomal operon was cloned, sequenced, and found to consist of three cistrons which we named arsR, arsB, and arsC because of their strong homology to plasmid-borne ars operons. Mutants in the chromosomal ars operon were found to be approximately 10- to 100-fold more sensitive to sodium arsenate and arsenite exposure than wild-type E. coli, while wild-type E. coli that contained the operon cloned on a ColE1-based plasmid was found to be at least 2- to 10-fold more resistant to sodium arsenate and arsenite. Moreover, Southern blotting and high-stringency hybridization of this operon with chromosomal DNAs from a number of bacterial species showed homologous sequences among members of the family Enterobacteriaceae, and hybridization was detectable even in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These results suggest that the chromosomal ars operon may be the evolutionary precursor of the plasmid-borne operon, as a multicopy plasmid location would allow the operon to be amplified and its products to confer increased resistance to this toxic metalloid.