Summary
A mutant of Escherichia coli with a temperature sensitive defect in DNA replication is sensitive to X-irradiation but not to UV-irradiation. After UV-irradiation, dark-repair processes—dimer excision, DNA breakdown, repair synthesis and DNA strand joining—appear normal at the restrictive temperature. After X-irradiation, DNA degradation exceeds that in the wild type, and irradiation-dependent DNA synthesis does not occur. Single-strand breaks introduced into the DNA by the irradiation are nor repaired. The data indicate that the mutation results in a defect in repair of X-ray induced single-strand breaks as well as a defect in DNA replication. They provide evidence for the existence of a repair pathway for X-irradiated DNA similar to, but at least partially independent from, that postulated for the dark-repair of UV-irradiated DNA, viz., degradation at the site of the lesion, resynthesis of the degraded DNA complement and ligation of the DNA strand.
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Communicated by E. Witkin
This material has been published as an abstract in Genetics 64, p. 18 (1970).
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Fangman, W.L., Russel, M. X-Irradiation sensitivity in Escherichia coli defective in DNA replication. Molec. Gen. Genet. 110, 332–347 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00438275
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00438275