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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1988 Dec;85(23):9124–9127. doi: 10.1073/pnas.85.23.9124

Overproduction of the epsilon subunit of DNA polymerase III counteracts the SOS mutagenic response of Escherichia coli.

P Jonczyk 1, I Fijalkowska 1, Z Ciesla 1
PMCID: PMC282676  PMID: 3057500

Abstract

It has been found that the mutator phenotype of the recA441 and recA730 strains that express the SOS response constitutively is suppressed by pIP1, a high-copy plasmid carrying the dnaQ gene encoding the 3'----5' exonuclease subunit (epsilon) of DNA polymerase III. We have constructed plasmid pIP11, in which the dnaQ gene is fused to the strong tac (trp-lac) promoter. Enhanced synthesis of the epsilon subunit stimulated by isopropyl beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside, the inducer of tac, prevents expression of the mutator phenotype of recA441 and markedly decreases the frequency of UV-induced mutations. These results strongly suggest that a loss of editing capacity by the epsilon subunit of DNA polymerase III holoenzyme plays a crucial role in generation of mutations during the SOS response.

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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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