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. 1974 Mar;117(3):987–993. doi: 10.1128/jb.117.3.987-993.1974

Decay of Ribonucleic Acid Synthesis in Amino Acid-Starved Escherichia coli After Rifampin Treatment

Allen C Rogerson a,1, David H Ezekiel a
PMCID: PMC246576  PMID: 4591964

Abstract

The concentration of rifampin necessary to affect the initiation of ribonucleic acid (RNA) synthesis quickly in Escherichia coli strains K-12 and 15TAU was about 200 μg/ml, as determined by extrapolation of the effect of the drug on the induction of β-galactosidase synthesis. A lag in the action of rifampin of about 10 s was confirmed. Rifampin was then used as a probe to compare RNA synthesis in growing and amino acid-starved E. coli. Restoring arginine to arginine-starved strain 15TAU immediately after rifampin inhibition did not detectably restore the rate of uracil uptake to that of uninhibited cells. The residual rate of RNA synthesis (corrected for acid-soluble triphosphate specific activities) after rifampin treatment of both growing and isoleucine-starved (valine-inhibited) cultures of strain K-12 showed similar decay kinetics. These findings support the notion that amino acid starvation blocks the initiation of some RNA transcription units, but do not rule out other possibilities.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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