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. 1967 Nov;94(5):1470–1474. doi: 10.1128/jb.94.5.1470-1474.1967

Enhancement of Agrobacterium tumefaciens Infectivity by Mitomycin C

Gary T Heberlein a,1, James A Lippincott a
PMCID: PMC276849  PMID: 6057802

Abstract

The ability of Agrobacterium tumefaciens to induce pinto leaf tumors may be enhanced two- to threefold after treatment with mitomycin C. The enhancement may be obtained with either lethal or nonlethal concentrations. With 10-min treatments, an optimal response was obtained with 0.005 μg of mitomycin C per ml in the absence of any change in the number of viable cells. Both the tumor induction process and the tumors induced by treated cultures appear qualitatively the same as controls. To account for these results, the antibiotic must increase the proportion of viable cells that will subsequently initiate tumors. One, or at most a few, random lesions in the bacterial chromosome seem to be the necessary requirement for this promotion. At mitomycin concentrations of 1 and 5 μg/ml, the ability of A. tumefaciens to initiate tumors is rapidly lost, indicating that a fairly intact bacterial chromosome is one of the essentials for the tumor induction process.

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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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