Summary
Mutants from Escherichia coli Q13 were selected for resistance to leucomycin, tylosin or spiramycin. Most of the mutants so selected exhibited cross resistance to all the macrolide antibiotics tested including erythromycin. A few mutants however seem to be less resistant to erythromycin. One mutant, QSP008, was highly resistant to tylosin, leucomycin and spiramycin but relatively sensitive to erythromycin. Another mutant, QSP006, was highly resistant to spiramycin but less resistant to erythromycin, tylosin and leucomycin. This selective resistance of cells to specific antibiotics could be due to the extent of conformational alteration of their ribosomes, which may be demonstrated by the extent of 14C-erythromycin binding to these ribosomes. The ribosomes from QSP008 cells were found to contain an altered 50-8 protein of the 50s ribosomal subunit, while in the ribosomes from QSP006 no such protein change could be detected by the methods used.
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Communicated by H. G. Wittmann
A preliminary data of part of this work has been published (Tanaka, Teraoka, Tamaki, Watanabe, Osawa, Otaka, and Takata, 1971).
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Tanaka, K., Tamaki, M., Itoh, T. et al. Ribosomes from spiramycin resistant mutants of Escherichia coli Q13. Molec. Gen. Genet. 114, 23–30 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00268743
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00268743