Specific disruption of samAB genes in a 60-megadalton cryptic plasmid of Salmonella typhimurium

Abstract

The expression of umuDC operon is required for UV and most chemical mutagenesis in Escherichia coli. The closely related species Salmonella typhimurium has two sets of umuDC-like operons, i.e., umuDC ST in the chromosome and samAB in a 60-megadalton cryptic plasmid. In this study, we specifically disrupted the samAB genes to investigate their exact roles in UV mutagenesis in S. typhimurium. The specific gene disruption was carried out by the preligation method. Deletion of samAB did not lower the UV mutability of S. typhimurium TA2659 but rather increased the UV mutability about twofold. The samAB-umuDC ST double deletion mutant as well as the umuDC ST deletion mutant was UV nonmutable. These results suggest that the samAB genes do not considerably contribute to the UV mutability of S. typhimurium and raise the question of why such quiet umuDC-like genes are present in the cryptic plasmid of S. typhimurium.