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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
. 1985 Jan;82(2):503–505. doi: 10.1073/pnas.82.2.503

Repair of defined single base-pair mismatches in Escherichia coli

Christiane Dohet *, Robert Wagner *, Miroslav Radman *,
PMCID: PMC397067  PMID: 16593539

Abstract

Heteroduplexes with single base-pair mismatches of known sequence were prepared by annealing separated strands of bacteriophage λ DNA and used to transfect Escherichia coli. Each of the eight possible single base-pair mismatches was constructed. Genetic analysis of the progeny phages obtained from transfected bacteria indicates that the E. coli mismatch repair system does not recognize (or does not repair) all single base-pair mismatches with equal efficiency. In particular, the A·G, C·T, and C·C mismatches appear to be less repaired than any others. The mutator character of mismatch repair-deficient mutants suggests that such unrepaired mismatches should occur infrequently during E. coli DNA replication.

Keywords: bacteriophage λ, heteroduplex, mutagenesis, gene conversion

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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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