A. The metabolic pathways. Compounds of DNA metabolism are in black, compounds of RNA metabolism are in orange. Genes are colored according to functions: general (blue), dTTP-synthesis (purple) or DNA repair (magenta). The big arrow shades are: green, general biosynthesis; yellow, salvage; blue, DNA degradation; cyan, RNA degradation; magenta, futile DNA-dU misincorporation/excision cycle; orange, futile DNA-rU misincorporation/excision cycle. B. Extended time course of the culture titer during thymine starvation in our standard conditions, to highlight the survival phase. The strains are: ThyA+, KKW59; thyA, KKW58. The three phases of TLD are shown in color: green for the resistance phase, red for the RED phase, purple for the survival phase. The values in this and subsequent figures are means of 4–40 independent measurements ± SEM. C. DAPI-staining of cells grown in the presence of dT, as well as the same cells T-starved for 1 hour or for 3 hours. D. The thyA recBCD mutants lack the resistance phase, while the thyA recF mutants die slowly. The strains are: thyA, KKW58; thyA recBCD, KJK63; thyA recF, RA31. Here and henceforth: if error bars are not visible, they are masked by the symbols. E. A scheme of the futile fork-break-and-repair cycle. F. Various models of replisomes traversing A-runs in the template DNA during T-starvation that we tested in this work.