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Published November 28, 1967 | public
Journal Article

The Process of Infection with Bacteriophage φX174: XV. Bacteriophage DNA Synthesis in Abortive Infections with a Set of Conditional Lethal Mutants

Abstract

Mitomycin C treatment of a mutant bacterial strain defective in its host-cell reactivation system will effectively suppress bacterial DNA synthesis while at the same time allowing normal growth of bacteriophage φX174. In contrast, mitomycin C-treated wild-type cells will not support φX growth. Using such mitomycin C-treated HCR− cells, it has been possible to study the incorporation of tritiated thymidine (or thymine) into viral DNA during abortive infections with several conditional lethal mutants of φX. Mutants representing each of the six known complementation groups have been studied. It has been found that mutants from three of the six groups form and reproduce the replicative form but are unable to synthesize infective or non-infective progeny single-stranded DNA. Mutants from two groups form and reproduce replicative form and also produce single-stranded progeny DNA. Mutant strains from one group form, but are unable to replicate, replicative form; nor do they synthesize single-stranded viral DNA.

Additional Information

© 1967 Elsevier Ltd. Received 20 June 1967. This research was supported in part by grant GM 13554 from the U.S. Public Health Service. One of us (B. H. L.) acknowledges a U.S. Government travel grant under the Fulbright-Hays Act. A preliminary account of this work was presented at the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Atlantic City in 1966.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023