Transposon stability and a role for conjugational transfer in adaptive mutability
Abstract
Lac+ revertants of Escherichia coli that occur after prolonged nonlethal selection display a high frequency of transposon loss when the transposon Tn10 and the reverting lacI33 allele are linked on an F′128 episome. As many as 20% of the Lac+ revertants are sensitive to tetracycline, about half because of transposon loss, nearly all by precise excision, and the remainder because of amplification of both the transposon and the linked lac allele. Lethality of the amplified products in the presence of tetracycline is a peculiarity of the tetA gene at high gene dosage. The selective conditions on lactose medium result in 10% transposon-free revertants, whether or not a requirement for conjugal DNA transfer is imposed. In addition, a similar fraction, about 5% of Lac− unreverted colonies that are products of transfer between cells experiencing nonlethal selection are also tetracycline-sensitive, and all are attributable to loss of the Tn10 transposon. These results suggest the possibility that the high frequency of transposon loss is a consequence of conjugal transfer, making this loss a marker for that transfer. We suggest that conjugal DNA transfer may be a prominent feature in the mutability process that occurs during nonlethal selection and that the subset of bacteria displaying hypermutability are those that experience such transfer.
Acknowledgments
We thank N. Kleckner, R. Kolter, and M. Marinus for bacterial strains, plasmids, and phages. V.G.G. thanks F. Stahl for a helpful discussion, P. Radicella for encouragement, advice, and ideas throughout this work, and R. Gallegos for his constant support. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant R37AI 05388 and a Merck fellowship to V.G.G.
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Accepted: April 24, 2000
Published online: June 6, 2000
Published in issue: June 20, 2000
Acknowledgments
We thank N. Kleckner, R. Kolter, and M. Marinus for bacterial strains, plasmids, and phages. V.G.G. thanks F. Stahl for a helpful discussion, P. Radicella for encouragement, advice, and ideas throughout this work, and R. Gallegos for his constant support. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant R37AI 05388 and a Merck fellowship to V.G.G.
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