The code below will read the data with no problems:
dta <- read.csv("ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/genbank/genomes/Bacteria/Escherichia_coli_K_12_substr__MG1655_uid225/U00096.ptt",
header = TRUE, skip = 2, sep = "\t")
I'm guessing that you are after a data frame:
> head(dta)
Location Strand Length PID Gene Synonym Code COG Product
1 190..255 + 21 1786182 thrL b0001 - - thr operon leader peptide
2 337..2799 + 820 1786183 thrA b0002 - - Bifunctional aspartokinase/homoserine dehydrogenase 1
3 2801..3733 + 310 1786184 thrB b0003 - - homoserine kinase
4 3734..5020 + 428 1786185 thrC b0004 - - L-threonine synthase
5 5234..5530 + 98 1786186 yaaX b0005 - - DUF2502 family putative periplasmic protein
6 5683..6459 - 258 1786187 yaaA b0006 - - peroxide resistance protein, lowers intracellular iron
In order to simplify the import I skipped the first two lines:
Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655, complete genome. - 1..4641652
4140 proteins
Location Strand Length PID Gene Synonym Code COG Product
190..255 + 21 1786182 thrL b0001 - - thr operon leader peptide
In case you want to read the whole file, I would suggest that you that have a look at this post. You can consider reading the whole thing and accessing the first two lines separately and then importing the rest to a data frame.