In Streptomyces clavuligerus, the route to the biosynthesis of &amp / #945 / -aminoadipic acid (&amp / #945 / -AAA) represents an important primary metabolic pathway providing carbon flux to the synthetases of antibiotic formation. This carbon flow comes through the lysine-specific branch of the aspartate pathway and is rate limiting in the formation of cephamycin C, a second generation cephalosporin produced by this organism. In this study, the lysA gene which encodes for an important key enzyme of aspartate pathway / meso-diaminopimelic acid (DAP) decarboxylase (E.C.4.1.1.20) catalyzing the conversion of diaminopimelate to lysine was cloned and characterized for the first time from S. clavuligerus NRRL 3585. The attempts to clone the gene by constructing libraries of S. clavuligerus genomic DNA and screening of the libraries either by homologous probing or complementation approach gave no positive results. Then, PCR-based cloning was taken as the approach and the gene was amplified with PCR using the primers derived from the conserved sequences of lysA genes in two fragments (620 and 983 bp) which had overlapping regions. Fragments were then cloned and nucleotide sequencing revealed a complete open reading frame (ORF) encoding a protein of 463 aa (Mr 49, 907). The GC content of the gene was identified as 70.98 %. The gene sequence showed 83 % identity to the sequence of S. coelicolor lysA gene and 81 % identity to S. avermitilis lysA gene. By comparing the amino acid sequence of this protein to those available in database, the sites of the enzyme important for catalysis were identified.