Work

Thymineless Death in Escherichia coli Is Unaffected by Chromosomal Replication Complexity

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Thymineless death kills cells of any type and is used in anticancer and antimicrobial treatments. We tested the idea that the more replication forks there are in the chromosome during growth, the more extensive the resulting thymineless death. We varied the number of replication forks in the Escherichia coli chromosome, as measured by the origin-to-terminus ratio, ranging it from the normal 2 to 60, and even completely eliminated replication forks in the nonreplicating chromosomes (ori/ter ratio = 1). Unexpectedly, we found that thymineless death is unaffected by the intensity of replication or by its complete absence; we also found that even nonreplicating chromosomes still disappear during thymine starvation. We conclude that thymineless death can kill E. coli independently of chromosomal replication.

Source: Journal of Bacteriology

DOI: 10.1128/jb.00797-18

Authors: Sharik R. Khan, Andrei Kuzminov

Institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Language: English

Topic: Bacterial Genetics and Biotechnology

Subfield: Genetics

Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Award: Chromosomal death due to misincorporation of wrong material into DNA