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. 1970 Mar;101(3):851–855. doi: 10.1128/jb.101.3.851-855.1970

Quantitive Autoradiographic Study of Competence and Deoxyribonucleic Acid Incorporation in Bacillus subtilis

Sergio Somma 1, Mario Polsinelli 1
PMCID: PMC250401  PMID: 4985591

Abstract

The relationships among deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) uptake, transformation, and autoradiographic labeling were investigated. It is shown that: (i) autoradiography is a good method for measuring the total fraction of competent cells able to incorporate transforming DNA; in our best experiment that fraction was 11.5%. (ii) Computation of the fraction of competent cells in a culture of Bacillus subtilis, by comparing the frequencies of single and double transformants for two unlinked markers, gives values which are somewhat different from those obtained by auto-radiography. (iii) On the average, a competent cell of B. subtilis irreversibly takes up from 0.9 × 10−10 to 1.4 × 10−10 μg of DNA; this amount represents about 1/55 to 1/35 of the bacterial chromosome weighing 5 × 10−9 μg, and corresponds to three to six DNA molecules having a molecular weight of 1.6 × 107.

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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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